


Exiles

by wingthing



Series: The EQ Alternaverse [25]
Category: Elfquest
Genre: EQ Alternaverse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:33:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingthing/pseuds/wingthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trolls have declared war on the Go-Backs. Now they must choose - stay and face extinction, or risk everything to find a new home?  Kahvi learns the secret origins of her tribe while Teir journeys to the New Land in search of the fabled Great Holt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kahvi, One-Eye and Clearbrook ran up to Rayek. The elf that a moment before had flown at the Palace now lay deep in the snow, his boots sticking out of a snowdrift. The last of the iron plates that had made up the dome around the Palace were still falling to the ground. The noise still rang in their ears. 

“Oh, fine!” Kahvi growled. “Is he dead?” 

“No! He twitched!” Clearbrook exclaimed. “Help me pull him out, lifemate.” 

One-Eye and Clearbrook dug the exhausted Glider out of the snow. 

“Well, blackhair!” Kahvi announced. “Anything else you’d like to do? Knock the mountains down? Blast the sun out of the sky?” 

“Why did you try to destroy the Palace, Rayek?” Clearbrook asked. 

“No...” Rayek brushed the snow from his face. “It was the Gliders. I could not hold their power any longer. Their souls hurtled into the Palace with such joyful force, that it shattered the dome.” 

He turned, and his breath caught in his throat as he beheld the familiar spires of the Palace now glowing with unearthly light. “By the Scroll...” he whispered. “Look... the greatness of the Gliders’ magic... so long suppressed in Blue Mountain... it has renewed the home of the High Ones! The Palace... it is truly ours at last.” 

Kahvi snorted. “It glows like a beacon now. Every troll within reach will be hungering for it.” 

Rayek whirled on the Go-Back Chief. “With all the splendor before you, is that all you can say? This is the Palace! As it was the moment the High Ones landed on this world. Where is Timmain? Where is Ekuar? They will rejoice to see their home restored. Why are they not here? Why... this sight alone would be enough to make Timmain cast off her base wolf skin and become her true self again.” 

“Base, is it?” One-Eye grumbled. 

“I doubt I would want to see the High One’s true self,” Clearbrook murmured. “I doubt you would either, Rayek.” 

“Where are they, Kahvi?” Rayek pressed, ignoring the Wolfrider elders. 

Kahvi shrugged. “That white wolf of yours always runs wild. You know that.” 

“And Ekuar?” Rayek’s brow darkened as he sensed deception in Kahvi’s body language. “Where is Ekuar?” 

“I’m not his keeper. Like as not he’s been kidnapped by the trolls again.” 

“What?” Rayek advanced on her. “I told you what would happen if you failed to protect him!” 

“I’ve been ‘protecting’ that crazy old rockshaper since long before you were born, black-hair–” 

“You dare speak so of the Firstborn of the High Ones–” 

“Firstborn nothing! He’s a crazy old owl and a damned nuisance. If you wanted him safe, you should have had your Wolfriders take him with them when they ran off baying for you and your fool-headed chief!” 

Rayek drew his hand back, but Clearbrook caught his wrist. “Think, Rayek. You can send, can’t you? Find Ekuar yourself.” 

“Of course!” Rayek whirled around, ignoring Kahvi completely now. The Go-Back chieftess fumed silently as Rayek closed his eyes and sought out Ekuar’s presence. 

“What’s with him?” she asked Clearbrook. “His bow’s unstrung, that’s for sure.” 

“He and Swift... had a rough time of it at Blue Mountain,” One-Eye said evasively. 

“What’s all this rot about the souls of the Gliders?” 

Clearbrook exchanged a furtive glance with her lifemate, then quickly summarized the events of the past month. She left out Winnowill’s assault on Swift’s blood and the Great Egg, for she herself could not begin to fully understand what had happened. 

“So he carried the spirits of hundreds of dead in that little head of his?” Kahvi sneered. “No wonder he’s got a few furballs up there.” 

Suddenly Rayek took off into the air, apparently on Ekuar’s trail. Kahvi spat on the snow once he was out of earshot. “Who does he think he is?” 

One-Eye turned back to the Palace. “The Master of... that...” 

Clearbrook clasped his hand tightly. “Oh.... if only Swift could see it... feel it like this!” 

“Should we go in?” One-Eye asked. 

“It... doesn’t seem right... we should wait for Rayek.” 

“Fish guts,” Kahvi turned on her heel. “If you’re just going to gape about like dipper-birds, I’m going to do something useful. The pieces of the dome are good troll-metal. I’ve got a few little tinkerers back at the lodge who would love a chance to try melting these over the firepit and forging spearheads for us.” 

“Are you at war with the trolls again, Kahvi?” Clearbrook asked. “Picknose has given us so few problems since we settled here.” 

“Aside from trying to lift that cursed rockshaper at every turn. Peace never lasts. And now that the Palace is glowing like fire, we have to be ready to protect it.” She hiked down the little hill towards the Go-Back lodge. “Come down to the lodge if you want to warm up. I’ve got a fawn to see to.” 

“Should we go?” Clearbrook asked. 

One-Eye slowly walked up to the pearlescent wall of the Palace and touched his hand to it. He drew in a sharp breath and stepped back. 

**What is it, Sur?** Clearbrook asked. 

**And I thought staring into the Scroll of Colors would feed my soul...** he reached for her hand and pressed it against the glowing stone in turn. Clearbrook felt a rush of warmth running through her blood, infusing the very marrow of her bones. The presence of countless elfin souls washed over her, welcoming her home. Where before the outer walls had been nothing but dull rock, now she felt she could close her eyes and sink into the stone as easily as through a shower of pure light. 

Rayek returned with Ekuar in his arms. The rockshaper was weeping with delight as Rayek set him down on the ground. “Oohhh... Mekda... Osek...” he whispered. “All my friends... here with me again... can you feel it?” 

“Where’s Kahvi?” Rayek asked. 

“Gone, but she’ll be back, blackhair,” One-Eye said. “And Clearbrook and I would like it if for once you two could share words without trading blows.” 

“Clearbrook, One-Eye!” Ekuar turned to them. “How was it in Blue Mountain? Did that nice floating girl catch up with you?” 

“Aroree?” Clearbrook asked. “Didn’t she stay behind with you?” 

“She flew off a few days later... I think. Something about... oh, great sadness.” Ekuar looked at Rayek. “Something’s changed, brownskin. Have... have you grown?” 

Rayek looked down at the cuffs of his red jacket, now a little above his wrists. Carrying the spirits of the Gliders for so many days must have affected him. “Heh. I guess I need new clothes. But I’ll explain as we–” Rayek’s eyes widened and his hands rose to his forehead. “Great shining sun!” 

“What? What is it?” Clearbrook asked. 

“Suntop! What power, to reach me even here! A sending... wild... confused...” 

“Has something happened to the tribe?” One-Eye asked. 

“Is Swift ill?” Clearbrook asked. 

“I... I cannot make sense of it. But he is in pain! Come. We cannot tarry out here.” 

Rayek led them to the doors of the Palace, no longer hanging ajar but closed and shimmering with a rainbow of subtle hues. One-Eye expected Ekuar would have to shape his way inside, but the doors swung open easily under Rayek’s touch. 

“I’ll be... light as featherdown,” One-Eye whispered as they stepped over the threshold. 

“Oohhhh,” Clearbrook breathed. Her eyes roamed over the crystal pillars and curving walls – the stairs and hanging prisms. “It is as if I’m seeing it all for the first time.” 

“I didn’t know what to make of it before,” One-Eye whispered. “Now... it’s everything I dreamed – more!” 

“The Holt of Holts...” Clearbrook agreed. 

“Timmain! Where is she?” Rayek fretted. “She should be here, to see this.” He hastened to the Scroll Room, hoping to find her there. But the white wolf was gone. 

“Why? Why now? She has had ample time to return from the forests! She should have felt it – even though she is so confined in wolf form, she should have felt it. Why? All that I promised – I have restored the Palace! Timmain should rejoice. She should already be here, already transformed...” 

“Maybe she knows what you don’t!” a taunting voice called. “Polish it or not, it’s still the same Palace, no more and no less.” 

Rayek turned. The Go-Back contingent was marching on the Scroll Room. 

Kahvi led the way, a little infant bundled in a sling against her breast. Vok, Urda and Kiv flanked her. 

“What are you doing here?” Rayek sneered. 

“Making sure you’re not up to any mischief in our trophy, black-hair.” 

“Trophy?” Rayek’s face contorted with sudden rage. “Trophy? You worthless fool, too mired in the mud to ever understand. This is no trophy. This is the Palace! Our true home! Our great ship – our ship of time and space. Can you not feel it? The spirits of the Palace are ready to join with the wind again. The limitations we have endured for untold years are at an end.” 

“So you woke up all this muckin’ magic, and you’re going to decide how to use it all, and dung to the rest of us?” 

“I am the Master of the Palace.” 

“What a beautiful child,” Clearbrook said, trying to lighten the mood. She drifted to Kahvi’s side to admire the little gray-eyed infant. The baby was being remarkably quiet, considering the shouting match that was once again beginning. He looked up at Clearbrook with timeless eyes. 

“What is his name?” 

“Teir,” Kahvi remarked off-hand. “So, tell me, blackhair. You’ve got the Palace. You got all the power – all this power serving you and you alone. Sounds like you’re making yourself a little king like Ol’ Greymung. We going to be your slaves now?” 

“I serve all elves – all elves you remember who they are!” he sneered. “But I will not waste my words on you – aagh!” he doubled over, his hand on his forehead. “I have it, child. Enough!” 

“What is it? Suntop again?” 

Rayek sat down on the edge of the dais that held the Scroll. “Oh... he is good, my little one. Very good. He... he has heard something – in his mind. A cry! The cry of elves in a distant place. They call for help.” 

“Elves?” Ekuar asked. “You mean... those we have yet to know.” 

“So he swears. And I do not doubt him. He is locked with them.” Rayek winced. “Oh... my brave child... they are tormenting him without rest. Only he can hear them. Only he knows where to find them.” 

Suddenly Rayek got to his feet. “Of course. I can feel them... the spirits of the Palace. They are ready to join with the wind again...” 

An unnatural wind lifted Rayek’s cloak and blew his hair about his face. “We will fly,” he announced, spreading his arms wide.“Fly! Spirits of the High Ones – spirits of all who have come before. Guide me, the guider. We will fly–” 

“Hey!” Kahvi shouted. 

“By my eye!” One-Eye slapped Rayek’s arms down about his sides. “Don’t do anything foolish, Rayek.” 

“Foolish? Don’t you understand, One-Eye? We can be at the Forbidden Grove in a mere heartbeat. We can bring the Palace to Swift – to them all. No longer will my child cry into the night alone. We must go to the Forbidden Grove, fast as skyfire – faster.” 

“You mean you’re taking the Palace away?” Kahvi snapped. “No chance. No chance, blackhair. The Palace is ours too. We won’t lose it.” 

“Yours? Don’t make me laugh!” 

Kiv raised his spear and rushed at Rayek, but One-Eye intervened. Baby Teir began to fuss and gurgle. 

“Now, wait a minute,” One-Eye said. “Clearbrook, let’s talk this out, right?” 

“Yes. There must be an accord we can reach.” 

“You wish me to parlay with these... beasts?” Rayek bristled. “We are wasting precious time! My lifemate and my children need me. I promised them their birthright and they shall have it!” 

“You’ll have to kill us first,” Kahvi swore. 

“A fine suggestion!” 

Teir was sobbing now, choking on his tears as he worked his way towards a lusty howl. 

Rayek drew his fist back. Clearbrook caught his arm. “Rayek! You wouldn’t strike a mother with her child, would you?” 

“You’re right,” Rayek relaxed his posture a little. But only a little. He locked eyes with Kahvi threateningly. “Clearbrook... would you please take the baby for a moment?” 

“Oh, just try it, blackhair!” 

“Enough!” One-Eye snapped. “You’re both brawling like children.” 

Mardu rushed to take Teir from Kahvi, and the chieftess yielded up the crying baby. “The Palace will not leave this spot,” Kahvi insisted. 

“I will not be grounded in the dust of forgetfulness!” Rayek swore. “The Palace will fly. And my son and I will guide it. Leave your smoky lodge and join us, or be left behind. There is no alternative.” 

“Oh, I can think of one!” Kahvi reached for her dagger. 

“Please, stop it,” Clearbrook begged. “Kahvi. Rayek is right, there is plenty of room for all the Go-Backs. You always wanted to be one with the Palace. Now is your chance.” 

“And live under the hand of this one? Never.” 

“Then stay here and freeze, and lose your chance at the stars!” 

Ekuar silently padded over to the nearest wall and bent his hands to the stone. 

“We will not be slaves of some high-handed magic-user with delusions of power–” 

“Peace,” Ekuar said softly, yet his voice somehow carried over the shouts. 

They turned towards the rockshaper. He held a large prism in his hands, a rough glowing stone of the same brilliance as the walls around them. 

“Ekuar? What have you done?” Rayek asked. 

“I’ve made a... a palace-stone,” Ekuar decided. “Now the Go-Backs can keep a piece of the Palace with them.” 

Kahvi frowned at the glowing stone, all strange angles and twisting filaments of light. Ekuar held it out, and she grudgingly took it in her hands. “Ooph,” she said, amazed at its weight. “It’s heavier than a troll-sword.” 

“It was light as a feather to me,” Ekuar said. 

Kahvi frowned. “This thing, light as a–” and suddenly she felt a great weight lift from her hands, and the stone became light as air. The crystal hummed and vibrated softly as Kahvi held it up to her face to get a better look. “But the Great Ice Wall...” she whispered. “I don’t know what it’s doing... but it’s doing.... it’s... breathing...?” 

“It feels the Palace,” Ekuar said. “And it feels the hands of a pretty young elf.” 

“Buckwads! It’s just a rock. It can’t... feel...?” Kavhi shivered at the strange sensation pulsing up her arms. “Open skies... what’s it doing to me?” 

“Do we have an accord?” Clearbrook asked hopefully. “If Ekuar’s right then you can use this to send to the Palace if you ever need it – or simply if you’d like to see it again. And you have your trophy, filled with the souls of those who gave their lives for it. It is...” she smiled, thinking of her great-grandson the stargazer. “It is your lodestone, and a greater prize the Go-Backs will never find.” 

Rayek paced nervously. “We should be going – Suntop–” 

**Patience, Rayek,** Clearbrook sent. 

**I have none! Swift is still heartsick after Winnowill’s attacks. And my son is in pain! I cannot wait.** 

**Well, you’ll have to. At least until this is settled. Or you’ll be taking a crew of very angry Go-Backs along for the ride.** 

“Do we have an accord?” Clearbrook repeated. Kahvi was still marvelling at the crystal in her hands. 

“Kahvi?” Urda prompted. 

“Yes...” Kahvi murmured. She looked up at Rayek and her gaze hardened. “But I want your word, blackhair, that you’ll answer us if we call for you, and that the rest of the time you and your mucking magic will stay out of our affairs.” 

“Nothing would please me more!” Rayek bit out. 

“I’m certain we will return soon,” Clearbrook said. “Skywise will no doubt want to see little Yun before long. But I think Rayek is very desperate to leave for the Forbidden Grove.” She ushered for the Go-Backs to leave as subtly as she could. 

“How do you know he can even fly this fool thing?” Kahvi growled under her breath. “Doesn’t look like a bird to me.” She glanced at Kiv, Vok and Urda, and she nodded. They fell into line behind her as Clearbrook nervously escorted them to the threshold. 

“What do we do now, chieftess?” Vok asked when they stood outside the Palace. 

“What do you think, Vok? We go on.” She looked down at the Palacestone and smiled as it hummed in her hands. “With this... our trophy.” 

Teir fussed in Mardu’s arms. “I think he’d like his mother to hold him now,” she said. 

“Oh, you hold him a little longer – you’re better with fawns than I,” Kahvi murmured. She would not take her eyes off the Palacestone. “Look how it glows... oh, I would not give black-hair the satisfaction of seeing my wonder before... but this – this is a trophy worthy of the Go-Backs. No mucking magic Scroll of Colors that leaves you spouting gibberish, no relics ready to float up off the ground and wink away. Just this... crystal that breathes and shivers like a living thing.” 

The Palace lifted up off the ice and rose high into the air, like a bubble rising through the Vastdeep. The Go-Backs watched the Palace shivered, then soared high over the pine forests. 

“Well... that’s that,” Kahvi whistled as the Palace winked out of sight, like a shooting star burning up overhead. 

“It will be strange, not having the Palace around anymore,” Mardu said. 

“It’ll be back soon,” Kahvi dismissed. “That furmate of yours will want another look at your fawn soon enough.” 

Mardu smiled. “I’ll be glad to see him again. So will Yun. She keeps singing ‘Baba, Baba.’” She smiled down at baby Teir. “When this one’s a little older, he’ll make a good playmate for her.” 

“You coddle her too much. You’ll do the same with Teir if I let you. Come on, let’s head back to camp before the trolls start roaming abroad again.” 

* * * 

The Palace did come back many times over the years that followed. Skywise showed what Kahvi saw as a most inappropriate interest in Mardu’s baby, and soon Yun and Mardu spent months away from the mountains with Skywise in the New Land. But when Yun grew up she chose to stay with her father, and as the years passed the Palace returned less and less frequently. Kahvi found she preferred it that way. The Palace was too tempting a prize for the trolls, who never did stop sniffing around the surface, believing Ekuar the old rockshaper still lived with the Go-Backs. And with the Palacestone sitting in its place of honour at the center of the lodge, the Go-Backs had no real for flashier trophies. 

The seasons passed as they always had. And the euphoria of victory slowly faded for the Go-Backs. With the Palace won at last, what was the new purpose to their lives? Kahvi had no answer for those who asked. And as years turned to decades, a bored stagnation slowly encroached on the Frozen Mountains. A new generation of Go-Backs were born knowing only peace. 

Ninety-one years after the Palace War, the peace was shattered. 

They didn’t understand at first, why the trolls suddenly turned violent. One day the old games of taunt-and-retreat continued as always, the next an entire hunting party was slaughtered, their bodies dragged into the tunnels, blood-stained furs and a few strands of hair all that remained. 

They lost ten of their number before they caught a troll scout and tortured him for answers. 

“Why has ol’ ‘King’ Picknose turned on us now?” Kahvi demanded as they set the troll’s beard on fire. 

“King Picknose? Picknose is gone!” he howled, and they doused the fire, eager to hear more. “The corrupt elf-loving lump of lard – he’s gone! Driven out on pain of death! King Slagg rules now. Long live Slagg! Death to the elves!” 

Kahvi showed the troll mercy and killed him with a single sword-thrust before roasting his flesh over the central hearth. 

“So... now we have a new war...” Kahvi smiled grimly. 

The trolls struck with frightening regularity. The Go-Backs struck back with the many brightmetal weapons they had forged from the shattered Palace dome. It was not long before the warriors fell into the old routine once more. 

More deaths, more births to balance the scales. When the younger elves complained, Kahvi had the same answer ready. 

“That’s how it’s always been. And that’s all there is. What more do you expect?” 

* * * 

The war had raged for four crustings when the conflict escalated in the troll’s favour. For four years every dead elf had been balanced more or less by a dead troll. But the trolls were growing craftier. They ambushed three Go-Backs who had snuck out under the cover of a morning fog to collect the highly coveted fluff-throat bird’s eggs. One of the gatherers had been heavily pregnant. But Go-Backs did not cosset their lifebearers. 

And now they were gone, and the trolls could celebrate the taking of four lives. 

“We must strike back!” Kahvi raged. “Arri’s death cannot go unavenged.” She rounded on Vok. “Where is Teir? The chief’s heir should be here as we plan the counter-attack. Where is he?” 

Vok shrugged. Enraged, Kahvi stalked out of the lodge. “I know where I’ll find him!” she shot back. “I have only to follow that cursed howling!” 

Sure enough, as she climbed into the forest surrounding the lodge, she found Teir sitting on a rock, practising with his wind-whistle. Six huge gray wolves lay in the snow at his feet. The largest of the wolves growled menacingly as Kahvi approached. 

“We’re calling a war council!” Kahvi announced. 

Her son looked up from his little flute. Kahvi fought back a sneer. He was every bit Vok’s creature, from the gentle planes of his face to his calm gray eyes to the almost-oblivious grace with which he carried himself. An ethereal Go-Back, as out of place as that glowing hulk of the Palace. 

How she despised him. 

He seldom joined the hunt, and when he did, he never used that strange almost-magic of his that allowed him to blend in the herds of wild deer and mammoths. He always stood apart, whether outside with his wolves or in the far corner of the lodge with Mardu and Vok. He was hardly even a Go-Back, she thought contemptuously. She should have left him in the snow years ago. 

“More war?” Teir asked. “More deaths? Now there’s a chief’s answer.” 

She was oddly cheered by his naked loathing of her. She summoned her best sneer. “Our dead must be avenged. What of Arri and her fawn?” 

“And what of Mardu, and hers?” 

Kahvi started at that. Teir noticed it. “You didn’t know?” 

“I didn’t know whether I was supposed to know,” she lied smoothly. But Teir was never fooled. “I don’t suppose there’s any doubt who the buck is, eh?” she added crudely. 

“Jealous, Mother?” 

“Why? He’s not mine. And I’ve had little use for him of late.” 

“That simple, is it? Must make life easy, never having to care about anyone but yourself.” 

“You watch your mouth, infant, or I’ll knock of those pretty teeth loose.” 

“We can’t stay here, Mother. We can’t just sit here and wait for the trolls to pick us all off one by one.” 

“Run?” Kahvi laughed. “Run like scared fawns, like the Wolfriders ran, taking the Palace with them? We are Go-Backs! We stand and fight. We fought the trolls and won before–” 

Teir got up from the rock. “Aye, and it took the Wolfriders and a troll arsenal to do it! But you won’t call for help! You won’t sound the retreat! You’ll just sit here and die of pride!” 

“You... coward!” She raised her spear. “While I’ve lead our warriors into battle and lost friends and tribemates, you hide behind these thrice-cursed beasts and tell me I should run!” 

“You’re not the only one who’s lost friends!” 

“We claimed this hill with blood and fire! We will not let the trolls have it.” 

“You won the Palace. And you have it – you’re holding a piece of it in the lodge. What is this hill to us, now? Let’s go, Mother, away from the trolls, away from war. We can start a new life–” 

“And let the trolls win? Never! We beat them before. We’ll beat them again.” 

Teir sat back on the rock and resumed his flute-playing as Kahvi disappeared down the hill. One of his wolves growled menacingly at the receding figure, but Teir reached down and gave the wolf a friendly scratch. 

Night was beginning to fall over the taiga when a lone Go-Back emerged from the cover of trees. 

“Come on, Wolf-father. It’s getting late. The trolls will be on their patrols, even around here.” 

Teir looked over. He gave his friend a faint smile. “All right, I was getting cold anyway.” He got up from the rock. “Take care of yourselves,” he told the wolves. 

“You and Kahvi had another row?” Kirjan asked, patting his agemate’s back. 

“Always.” 

* * * 

The lodge was smoky, full of raised voices. Teir smoothly moved to an alcove formed of leather curtains, where Mardu lay on her sleeping furs. Vok sat at her side, pointedly distancing himself from Kahvi. 

His place as Kahvi’s favoured lovemate had already been taken, even before Mardu’s pregnancy. The chieftess was flanked by Zey and Krim, both hardened warriors who charged into war with the same zeal as Kahvi. Krim was a veteran of the Palace War, a blunt female with sharp cheekbones and thick lips. Zey was younger than Teir, reckless and bloodthirsty, with cold eyes all the Go-Backs had learned to distrust. Kahvi approved of their bloodlust, and seldom let them stray from her side. 

Teir glared at Zey. Krim was a headstrong fool, but her love for her chieftess seemed genuine. Zey was an opportunist with loyalty to none but himself. He would feed his own chief to the trolls to save his skin.Yet Kahvi seemed blind to his faults – or perhaps she even approved of such ruthlessness. 

“We strike at their main tunnel tomorrow,” Kahvi declared. “We’ll send a pair of scouts to draw the guards out... out in the daylight they’re vulnerable. Then our main force will surround them and force the door open. We’ll strike hard and fast, then withdraw to the forest.” 

Teir snorted. Kahvi never invented strategy; she simply reused old manuevers. Sooner or later, her luck would run out. 

“Have you something to add, Teir?” Kahvi demanded. 

Teir held his tongue. 

“If the chief’s son doesn’t like our battle plan, maybe he should come with us and teach us a better way,” Zey sneered. 

“I don’t fight in pointless wars,” Teir replied. 

“It is right this coward should enjoy the warmth and safety we warriors fought so hard for?” 

“Be quiet, Zey. I was hunting for this tribe before you were off your mother’s teat.” 

“He’s no good to us in battle anyway,” Kahvi said. “Let him stay here and nurse the fawns.” 

No further plans were needed. As always, the Go-Backs celebrated imminent death with a Dance of Life, and Teir lurked behind a leather curtain as the young warriors gave themselves up to frenzied couplings. As a child forced to hide in the other room, he had thought the Dance of Life something wondrous and powerful. Now it seemed something meaningless, almost vulgar. What was the point to life, when one spent one’s days risking pointless death and one’s nights senselessly pounding every warm body in sight? The Go-Backs had become nothing but mindless, killing, rutting beasts. 

Mardu snuggled up against Vok under their bearskin. Teir glanced at them. 

“Must you fight tomorrow, Mardu?” 

She sighed. “Kahvi is our chieftess. And at the end of all the shouting, we must follow her.” 

“She’s mad. And you’re with child.” 

Vok shook his head. Sure enough, Mardu only sighed again. “And many out there may have caught by tomorrow.” 

**This war will destroy us. We should leave.** 

**You’ll never convince Kahvi of that,** Vok sent back. 

Teir brooded as he watched Vok and Mardu fall asleep even as the shouts and moans of the celebration outside their alcove continued long into the night. Then perhaps Kahvi shouldn’t be chief, Teir thought to himself. 

The next morning Kahvi led the warriors out and Teir found himself hoping that a troll’s crossbow bolt might silence her once and for all. 

* * * 

The trolls did not take Kahvi. But they took others. Of the thirty elves that went out, only twenty-one returned. Mardu was limping from a glancing blow to her thigh. Teir stitched the wound closed with sinew, then confronted Kahvi again. 

“If you want to kill yourself, fine, but leave the lifebearers alone. We’ll need them to rebuild.” 

Kahvi backhanded him angrily. “Mardu knows her place, at least!” she growled as he crouched on the ground, his hand to his bloody lip, his eyes burning with murderous rage. 

“You can’t fight her,” Mardu said as she in turn tended Teir’s wounds. “Kahvi is the only one who’s ever kept us all together. She was keeping us safe from humans and snow-bears when I was a child. She’s still keeping us together.” 

Teir looked down at Mardu’s flat stomach. “How many fawns have you dropped?” 

“This will be my eleventh. You know that.” 

“How many of them died because of Kahvi’s fool choices?” 

“What do you want of me, Teir? I won’t challenge Kahvi. And you won’t find one here who will.” 

“You think we have to leave here, don’t you? Or at least call for help if we’re going to stay here.” 

“What good would that do, Teir? It was one thing for the Wolfriders to help us in the Palace War... when we were fighting for the same thing – our birthright, our destiny. But now... Swift would only tell us to leave here. That’s why Kahvi won’t call for aid. Because she won’t move from this hill... no matter what it costs her.” 

“We have to leave.” 

“You ask the impossible of us, Teir.” 

Teir leaned his head out of their private alcove. Kahvi was sitting by the central hearth, her eyes pinned to the Palacestone. 

“Teir,” Mardu touched his shoulder. “We’ll survive. We always have.” 

* * * 

The winds blew down from the north as the weather turned. The sun disappeared for all but a few hours a day. Yet despite the heavy snow, the trolls ventured outside their tunnels more and more, ambushing Go-Backs before the elves could breach the tunnel doors. Teir’s frantic pleas for the Go-Backs to barricade themselves in the lodge went ignored. Urged on by Krim and Zey, Kahvi’s battle plan grew more offensive, and with each encounter, the Go-Backs lost more ground. 

Every night Teir heard Kahvi’s heated coupling with Zey and Krim. And every night Mardu lay in bed, recovering her reserves of strength while refusing to listen to Teir’s murmuring plans of insurrection. 

In the depths of winter trolls and elves clashed again. Kahvi emerged from the fray with a huge helmet wrenched from the head of a massive guard. She had already returned the trophy to the lodge and mounted it on the wall before she realized that her old friend Urda had not returned from the raid. 

“She fell,” Zey said gruffly when Kahvi interrogated him. 

“Did she die well?” 

“She was still alive when I had to leave her.” 

“And you let them take her?” 

“I had to leave her. She chose to bring up the rear.” 

“We’ll take our revenge for Urda!” Krim insisted. 

“Mother, be reasonable,” Teir pleaded. “Urda is dead now, and beyond all this! What good is vengeance to her? And you won’t avenge her death if you lose more elves.” 

“Go and sit with the infants, if you haven’t the guts to avenge your fallen kin.” 

**You’re right, you know,** Kirjan sent one night. **About leaving. About... forcing Kahvi to see reason. All the young ones agree... well, except for Zey and Chot and Roff. But we have Jirda on our side. And Kaiya. And Kiv and Yim. I think we can get Jekko and Cheider too. I bet even Mardu would go along, if you took a stand.** 

**Challenge?** 

**I don’t want to die here, Teir. A glorious death is what we’d all like, but there’s not glory here, no trophy to be won. Skot was right, all those years ago when he left. We should be able to think about other things than fighting.** 

The warriors returned to the rocks and crevices near the troll tunnels. Zey and Kahvi led the attack to avenge Urda’s death. 

Kahvi returned. Zey did not. 

* * * 

Kahvi was devastated at the death of her lovemate. No Dance of Death, no mourning songs were enough to honour his fallen body. After Zey’s death she ordered no more raids, no more jaunts past the protection of the trees. And she sat by the hearth, her eyes fixed to the humming Palacestone, her cheeks slowly growing hollow as she refused to eat. 

“We have to fight, Kahvi,” Krim urged. 

“Who can I look to now?” Kahvi murmured, so softly Krim had to bend her ear to Kahvi’s lips to hear. “Urda is dead. Zey is dead. Mardu will be fat with cub and useless to me. Vok has turned against me. My only child is a disgrace. Oh... if Vaya were here she’d teach the trolls something...” 

“I’m here, Kahvi. Let me be your sword-arm.” 

“Who can I look to now?” Kahvi repeated dully. “Oh... Zey... there was a mate worthy of a chieftess...” 

Krim sighed miserably. “Aye, chieftess. Zey was a good warrior.” 

“Krim’s eating her heart out,” Kirjan chuckled one afternoon as he, Teir and Jirda sat in the forest with Teir’s wolfpack. 

“I don’t care about Krim,” Teir grumbled. He scratched a great furry wolf’s head. The wolf panted happily. Seated in the snow, Jirda eyed the wolves uneasily. Though she respected her half-brother’s way with the forest creatures, the daughter of Vok and Arri never entirely trusted his ability to keep the wolves from turning dangerous. 

“Where could we do, if we did run?” she asked. “This is only home a lot of us know.” 

“Mardu’s the next oldest after Kahvi now that Urda’s gone,” Kirjan suggested. “She still remembers the Wandering Days.” 

“Mardu will never turn on Kahvi.” 

“We have to do something,” Teir said. “That’s my little brother Mardu’s carrying, and yours too, Jirda. I won’t let him die in the womb because Mardu’s off fighting trolls when she should be resting. And I won’t let him die as a newborn because we’re too busy playing war to keep the hearth fire going.” 

“We could call the Palace,” Jirda said gamely. 

“No,” Kirjan said. He doffed his furred hood and scratched at his ragged brown hair. “Nhhh... poorly tanned pieces of dung we’re using these days. No, we can’t call the Palace. If we say we’re going to go crying to ol’ blackhair we’ll lose Kiv and Cheider and half of the others. We’re Go-Backs. We can get out of this dung hole ourselves.” 

Jirda hugged her knees. “Mother always said a good Go-Back isn’t afraid of dying. But I don’t want to end up like Mother.” 

“Only fools want to die, Jirda,” Teir said. 

One of the wolves snapped upright and growled low. A young Go-Back jogged up the hill, her hood thrown back from her wild blond hair and wind-burned face. 

“Teir!” she called. 

“What is it, Yim?” 

“Kahvi’s up in arms again! She’s saying she’s waited too long! She wants to launch a full assault on the trolls tomorrow – all of us, any lifebearers who haven't fattened yet, and all fawns over two-eights.” 

Teir looked at Kirjan. Kirjan shook his head. Teir sighed. He shrugged off his furred hood, and his brown-black hair fell about his face. “I need your help, Jirda.” 

* * * 

“We’ll teach those filthy trolls to meddle with us!” Kahvi swore as she marshalled her warriors. “We’ll attack the heart of their kingdom, right down their main weapon’s shaft. Let’s see them shoot us with one of their giant crossbow bolts!” 

She heard gasps behind her. She turned, and saw Teir stride into the lodge. His hood was cast back, and his long hair had been braided into multiple strands. Two braids hung in front of either ear. His right hand held his seldom-used spear. 

“Well, well, don’t you look handsome?” Kahvi taunted. 

“You’re not leading us into certain death, Kahvi,” Teir said calmly. “Do what you want with your own life, if you cherish it so little. But I am leaving these mountains, and I am taking all those who’ll follow me.” 

“Are you now?” Kahvi seized her own spear. “Challenge, infant?” 

“I don’t want to fight you, Mother.” 

Kahvi threw down her spear. “I need no weapon to teach this pup a lesson.” She balled her fist. 

“Mother–” 

She swung at him, clipping his jaw. Teir yielded to the blow, then looked back at her again. “Does that make you feel better?” 

Enraged, she punched again. This time Teir moved. In a blur, he raised one arm to divert the thrust of her arm. As she wobbled, momentarily off-balance, he pulled her forward, then flipped her around, her back to his chest, and hooked her own right hand around her neck. 

“Aghh!” Kahvi swore, but Teir held her firm. A knee to her back brought her down to the ground. 

“Enough, Mother!” he growled in her ear as he crouched behind her. “Stay here with your tribe. But I’m taking mine and leaving.” 

“Nnnghh!” Kahvi struggled. She forced her head up. “You would follow this... this backstabbing child?” 

For a moment no one spoke. Then Kirjan stepped forward. “We’re tired of war, Kahvi.” 

“We don’t want to die tomorrow,” Jirda said, almost apologetically. 

Slowly, others moved to join Jirda and Kirjan. Kahvi’s lip curled back as more and more of the younger warriors stood by her son’s friends. But when her old friend Kiv reluctantly joined the dissenters, Kahvi sagged against Teir’s chest helplessly. “You are all set against me,” she muttered. 

“It’s over, Mother,” Teir said. He got to his feet, releasing her. 

“Dung to that!” Kahvi got to her feet. But when she once again confronted the staring faces of her tribemates, she knew she was beaten. 

“I’ve kept you all safe for more years than any of us can remember!” she challenged. A few guilty parties looked away, but most just stared back calmly. It struck Kahvi how few there were. Before Picknose’s downfall, the Go-Backs had numbered nearly sixty. Now there were only four-eights or so. 

Mardu moved to Teir’s side. Her belly was beginning to swell with the child within her. “Mardu?” Kahvi pleaded. “Vok?” 

“I want my fawn to have a chance in this world,” Mardu said. “He has none here.” 

Kahvi turned away, defeated. Krim hastened to her side. 

“Let them go, the cowards! We’re still with you, chieftess. Chot, and Roff and the others... they follow you. As I follow you. Let me be your second, Kahvi. We’ll teach those trolls a lesson–” 

Kahvi only shook her head. “I’m chief of the Go-Backs. I’ve been chief since before we called ourselves Go-Backs, since before your grandmother was born, Krim. This tribe is all I’ve got. And I’m not going to lose it to some runny-nosed pup.” 

She turned back to the others and raised her voice. “If we go, we go together! Whether you think you need me or not, I need my tribe, and no soft-bellied infant like you is going to take it from me, Teir!” 

Kirjan turned to Teir. “Where do we go?” 

Teir noted the sneer that contorted Kahvi’s lips, the way the others were following Kirjan’s lead in looking to Teir for guidance. He considered it a moment. How long had he been urging a retreat now? Yet he had never actually thought where they could find safety. 

Not through the Palace. Kirjan was right about that. The war-hardened Go-Backs would never stomach calling on Rayek and Swift for aid. Not to the south, for the trolls held all the land between their mountain and the Snow Country. 

“We go west,” Teir said. “We make for the sea.” 

* * * 

Once the decision was made, no time was wasted. Four days after Kahvi lost her authority to Teir, the Go-Backs left the mountain. They did so under the cover of darkness. All their possessions on their backs, all their fur blankets hastily converted into cloaks and coats, they trudged into the treeline, the young and the lifebearers riding on their stags. 

Kahvi rode at the head of the string, but it was clear her power was gone. While the older warriors continued to follow her lead, and the younger ones went through the motions of deference, Teir was the clear leader of their march. He rode on the edge of the party, astride not a stag, but one of his great wolves. Kahvi sneered. Had she not been sticking to Vok the month Teir was conceived, she might have wondered if he was not a half-Wolfrider, sired by an elf who had come to her by cover of darkness. 

They travelled due north for a night and a morning, then rested in the afternoon. By evening they camped on a ridge line overlooking a great barren valley. No trees grew below. No rock formations rose from the sheet of ice. All was white and still. The valley stretched several days’ journey before it blended into the foothills of distant mountains. 

“The Great Ice Wall,” Mardu breathed. “Or should I call it the Roof, for that’s what we’ll be crossing.” 

“No one has ever crossed the Great Ice Wall,” Kahvi scoffed. 

They slept fitfully in shelters of pine branches and snow caves. Come daybreak Teir and his wolves hunted for meat, and brought back a large wild deer for the tribe to share. The eager youngsters ate the liver and haunches raw and blood-warm, while the rest was charred over the fire and gulped down by the others. By noon there was little left of the deer, save for the tough muscles and the bones, while the wolves happily cleaned up. 

They spent the day carefully descending to the valley. No one wanted to camp against the rocks where a hidden troll tunnel might disgorge a host of enemies. So despite the darkness of the long winter nights, they lit torches and continued out onto the ice. The full moons overhead helped guide them, as did the northern lights blanketing the sky. 

The ice cracked and moaned under their feet. Several elves stumbled into small crevasses, and had to be hauled out, cursing all the way. A stag fell and broke its hind leg. They killed and butchered the beast and made camp on the cold ice for the night. 

“The ice is moving,” Mardu murmured as the last of the torches were snuffed out and they tried to sleep, bundled in crude tents of furs, snug against their smelly beasts for warmth. 

“We’re walking on the back of a snow-beast,” Kahvi grumbled. “It’s only a matter of time before it realizes and shrugs us off.” 

For two more days they crossed the ice, travelling in loose single file. A deep fissure opened up on the second days and took Shurka from them. By the time an elf was lowered by rope into the crevasse, he had already died from his injuries. They left his body down the crevasse, but scavenged his warm furs and weapons. On the third day the hooves of a stag opened another long fissure line. The stag and rider managed to leap away in time, but the fissure soon grew too wide for an elf to jump. The tribe was separated, and the march had to stop while those behind the fissure slowly hiked north, trying to find a way across. 

Late in the third night, when the moons had set and only the northern lights illuminated the glacier, they reached the western edge of the Wall. Great seracs of ice rose all around them. Carefully the thirty-three Go-Backs and ten stags picked their way through the icefall until they were once again on solid rock. 

They camped on a ridge for the next few days, hunting for fresh meat and planning their next move. Mercifully, there were no signs of trolls on the mountain. 

Old Klar, scarred from many battles and hard winters, developed a bad cough that shook his sides. Teir made him a broth of hot bear fat and forced him to drink it. But on the seventh day since they left the lodge, Klar began coughing up blood. 

He died in the night, and they found his frozen body under his furs come the fleeting morning light. Teir decided it was time to move on. 

Mardu’s boots were old and the seams were giving way. Her feet was nearly white with the sting of frost. Teir and Vok wrapped her feet in soft rabbit-skin and laced Klar’s boots to fit her. 

“You’ll ride on your stag and you won’t get down, even if I have to tie you down myself,” Vok said. Mardu threatened to knock his teeth out, but obediently mounted the stag. 

Teir smiled at the easy love between the two. Though Go-Backs seldom lifemated – with the force of Recognition long extinct they saw little reason for it – Teir suspected the two might well choose lifemating. It was no secret Mardu had long desired Vok, and now that Kahvi had distanced herself from both of them, the two had naturally drifted ever-closer together. Now Vok was looking forward to the birth of Mardu’s child with a love he had never felt before. 

“Most of the time I don’t know I’m the father of a fawn until it grows up a little and I can see myself in its eyes,” Vok once said to Teir. “But with you and Vaya I knew I was Kahvi’s only lovemate when she caught. And oh, I couldn’t wait to see you both. But Kahvi... my feelings for her never changed. She was my lovemate, my chieftess, my friend. With Mardu... she’s more to me now, because of the fawn! And I can’t wait to hold them both in my arms.” 

His father and the woman who should have been his mother. It seemed the perfect match to Teir. 

“Sentimental fool,” Kahvi growled. 

Kahvi was jealous of his love for Mardu. Everyone knew it but Kahvi. But Teir had no sympathy for her. His infant memories were full of trauma: of being pushed from his mother’s warm breast; of having his rag dolls kicked aside and replaced with toy spears; of watching her stalk off in anger, leaving him crying on the floor. 

Kahvi marshalled the hunters to look for game in the new mountains, for Teir’s six wolves were not enough to feed the entire tribe every day. She recovered some of her authority and wielded it cruelly, scorning the young and the lifebearers who could not hunt. She repulsed Krim’s attempts to comfort her and instead took the sullen Chot as her new lovemate. But even he couldn’t den with her in her crude tent, and she slept alone, her body wrapped around the Palacestone. 

Krim bore her rejection stoically, and took her anger out on Teir and the rival faction. 

“You’re all milk-soft pups not to trust in Kahvi! She was your chief, and your parents’ chief, and your parents’ parents’ chief and beyond! How dare you turn your backs on her and stand by some wolf-kin magic-user!” 

“We didn’t turn our backs on Kahvi,” Kirjan retorted. “She turned her back on us.” 

“Don’t you understand that she needs us!” Krim exploded passionately. 

“You love her, don’t you?” Teir asked her one night. “More than a tribemate loves a chief, I mean.” 

Krim screwed up her face in a grimace of contempt. “You’ve been hanging around that doe-eyed father of yours too long, Teir.” But he was not fooled by her bluster. 

“She is our chief,” Krim murmured later than night. “The greatest chief we could ever want... the greatest warrior...” 

Many of the Go-Backs wanted to stay on their new mountain, but after a month of carefully building a new camp, two scouts found fresh tracks of trolls in the snow. 

* * * 

“What do we do?” Kirjan asked as he, Teir and Jirda sat inside the cramped tent made up of stitched-together deerskins. 

“We have to keep going,” Teir said. “We started this. We have to finish it. We have to find a place where there are no trolls.” 

Jirda bit her lip. “We’re with you,” Kirjan said confidently. 

“What about the lifebearers?” Jirda asked. “What about Mardu?” 

“They’ll all be safer if we can get away from the trolls,” Teir said. 

“Kahvi won’t like it...” Jirda murmured. 

“Kahvi doesn’t have a choice!” Kirjan retorted, a clumsy grin on his face. “The tribe will follow Teir.” 

But Teir was more gloomy. “I don’t want these.” He shook the braids in front of his ears. “I don’t want to be a leader of many.” 

“I know who you want to be our leader,” Jirda said. “We all know. Or maybe you just wish she were your mother.” 

“She is my mother,” Teir countered. “In every way that matters.” 

“So where do we go?” Kirjan asked. “West?” 

Teir fiddled with the two cat’s teeth necklaces he wore over the fur neckline of his parka. At length he sighed. “West. To the sea.” 

* * * 

They hunted for another eight-of-days to gather supplies. And then they set out again, climbing up through the mountain passes, crossing through the snowfields and dense forests, then descending through glacial valleys until they once again saw flat land. Only it wasn't land. 

“Oh... dung chips,” Kahvi moaned as she caught sight of it. “Well, you’re playing chief of this pack of rats. Do we try to cross this... this valley of nothing?” 

Teir looked down at the valley that stretched out, a great sheet of white dotted with specks of rock. In the poor light, the sheet extended all the way to every horizon. 

“Where is the sea?” Kirjan asked. 

“Somewhere beyond,” Teir said. 

“Maybe this is the sea, and its frozen over,” Jirda mused. 

“No,” Mardu said. She got down from stag-back despite Vok’s fretting and looked down in the dark valley. “No, I remember the sea. Years ago... when my third-born was still alive... or was it my fourth? No, the sea freezes in great chunks and blocks that float over the water. But the water underneath is always flowing free, churning and rolling in whitecaps.” 

“The sea’s beyond this valley of ice,” Teir said. “We just have to keep going.” 

“Why the sea?” Kirjan asked. “Why make for the sea? Why not go south? Maybe to Blue Mountain... or whatever’s left of it, if ol’ Suntop wasn’t lying in those hearth fire tales of his. Or the Snow Country.” 

“The sea,” Teir said simply. 

* * * 

“Tell me about the sea again,” Teir asked Mardu as the four of them shared the tiny tent. Mardu lay on her back, her legs tucked up because of the lack of space. Vok curled at her side, an arm hooked protectively over her breast. Teir lay down on the furs, his hand on Mardu’s swollen stomach. The fawn kicked, and Teir chuckled under his breath. 

“Mm, it’s a warrior for sure,” Mardu smiled. “Ah... the sea again. The sea... was like a dream. Blue-grey water stretching out to the horizon... dotted with little floating islands of ice. Cold wind... sharp against my face. Fishy smell. And salt. Whenever I’d like my lips, there’d be salt. Endless hunting – seabats, we called them, that would come onto land to pup. And birds. And bears and deer that came down to lick the salt along the rock beaches. And we’d dig in the sand for these creatures in shells... like snails but in all shapes and sizes. No one else remembers... it was so long ago. But I remember. I loved the sea. But I loved the land too,” she added quickly. “The plains of the Snow Country. Long winters... long summers... riding over endless valleys... you could always see what was coming, what you’d left behind. I loved the plains most of all, I think. But there were too many many humans in Snow Country. So we moved north, just south of the Great Ice Wall. And that’s when we heard the Palace call us.” 

“We’ll find you your plains again, Mardu,” Vok promised. “Somewhere.” 

* * * 

They descended into the Valley of Ice. The desolation made the Roof of the Great Ice Wall seem hospitable. There was no sign of life anywhere, and when the sun set early in the afternoon the long night brought such a sense of emptiness than even hardened warriors shivered with fear. 

The wolves howled at night, hoping to hear their distant kin. The moaning of the shifting ice was the only answer they received. 

Kahvi sat out on the empty ice when everyone else had hunkered down for the night. She held the Palacestone in her lap, close to her chest, and the ball of crystal hummed and pulsed with light. Her eyes drifted up to the sky, and the echoing lights overhead. 

“I wonder what she sees in it?” Jirda murmured the next day as they continued their trek across the ice. 

“Who knows,” Kirjan shrugged. “Kahvi was all against ‘mucking-magic’ when I was a cub. But as soon as she picked up that cursed Palacestone she’s never been able to take her eyes off it.” 

“She sees something in it,” Teir decided. “Her past maybe... those years when she was something... beautiful. When the Go-Backs would have followed her down that tunnel into certain death and nothing you or I or anyone could have said would have mattered.” 

“I wonder how old she really is?” Jirda breathed. 

“Older than the mountains,” Teir shrugged. “Older than any elf should live to be, maybe. Maybe that’s why she needs the Palacestone. It’s timeless... like her. It remembers everything she’s forgotten.” 

Two days on the ice turned to three. Three days turned to six. They wandered in a vaguely westward direction, but as clouds moved in to hide the stars they could not find their way. Occasionally they reached a rocky outcropping that made it through the heavy layer of ice. “A once-mountain top,” Mardu mused softly when they camped on one such outcropping. 

But there was no life on the mountain top, not even lichens. Nothing but bare rock. 

Their supplies began to run low, and careful rationing began. 

A ferocious blizzard struck them on the seventh day. As first they persevered. But the winds grew, and the snow assaulted them into the long night. They could only try to bury themselves in the snow and wait out the winds. But despite the blizzard, there was little snow they could hide in... just ice. Hard, creaking, ice. The Go-Backs huddled behind their deer, trying to keep out of the wind. 

**This is bad!** Teir’s cry echoed through the camp. 

**Dungchips, do you think so?** Kahvi shot back. 

Teir struggled to wedge his body even further into the shallow pit they had dug, forcing his shoulder and leg against the ice-hard pack, shoving snow aside to made a deeper shelter. At his side Mardu shivered, her skin already taking on a blueish cast even as Vok shielded her with his body. 

**It’s a bad one... Won’t break... until morning... wouldn’t think.... I’m so cold.... Where are you.... Just hold fast.... I’m scared!** scattered sending stars pierced the air, some rallying cries, others desperate pleas. The moans and cries of the deer joined the wail of the storm, until the winds rose so high that even the deer were silenced. Teir lowered his head, sinking deeper into his little shelter, drawing the heavy furs over the shallow bowl dug out of the snow. 

**Keep moving,** Kahvi’s call sounded as the storm increased, as the wind silenced all sound with its unearthly howl. **No one fall asleep. Not in this. You’ll freeze if you fall asleep. Keep moving, and keep your head down.** 

**We’ll all die in this...** one anonymous call – or was it many, all voicing the same fears – filtered through the confusion. Individual voices soon become lost in arguements and cries, pleadings and prayers. As no one voice could be heard in a screaming mob, so it became impossible to make out one sending in a sea of overlapping telepathy. 

**Keep sending,** Mardu ordered. **Sending is good, it keeps us active.** 

**But I’m so cold...** 

When morning broke, two deer were dead, and so were two elves. 

Teir counted the dead under his breath. Shurka, Klar, Tratt and Ref. Thirty-four elves had set out, and only thirty remained. How many more would die before he found Mardu’s sea. Was it even out there? 

“Their deaths are on your head,” Kahvi growled. 

“As the deaths of Urda and Zey and all the others are on yours,” Teir countered. 

If she was seized with an urge to strike him, she did not show it. Teir was surprised. 

“They died nobly at least,” she finally said. “Not cold and alone on the ice.” 

“Death is death, Mother. We all go the Palace in the end. Does it really matter how we get there?” 

And if I was wrong... and we don’t find Mardu’s sea... I will be the one who killed the tribe, Teir thought. And it won’t matter how hard I tried. Death is death. 

In anger, he finger-combed the braids out of his hair, then rebraided it back behind his ears. He would wear no chief’s mark. 

After another day of travel, the glacier was no longer flat, but now steeply inclined, and shattered into sharp steps. Teir guessed the ice was being forced over the underlying rock. It was hard going. Another stag fell and had to be killed. At least now they had fresh meat. But only six stags were left. Hopefully they were find new ones once they settled. If they settled. 

They camped on the ice that night, their sixtieth night since leaving the Go-Back Lodge. The moaning and cracking of the ice was louder than ever. “Sounds like thunder,” Mardu murmured. 

“How is the fawn?” Vok asked, massaging her swollen stomach. “Is it still kicking?” 

“It’s fine,” Mardu smiled. “Strong as ever. Don’t worry. We’ll have a beautiful little baby in another crusting.” 

Again they heard the crackle of distant thunder. Yet there were no clouds in the sky. 

“I smell salt,” Mardu murmured as she fell asleep. 

* * * 

“Teir! Teir!” Kirjan called. Teir slowly woke up and crawled out of the shelter of snow and furs. He scrambled up the hillside, chasing the excited shouts from Kirjan and the others. The sun was just rising in the north, and the sky was painted with rose and orange. Again Teir heard the din of thunder, yet again there were no stormclouds in the sky. 

“What is it? 

“Come see!” Jirda shouted. “It’s amazing!” 

Teir raced up the hillside. At length he reached Kirjan, Jirda, Cheider and Yim on the crest of the hill. 

Beyond the hilltop the ice spread out in a great shelf. And then abruptly it ended. A jagged line of crumbling ice lay less than half a day’s journey away. And beyond lay dark gravel beaches. And the grey-blue sea.


	2. Passage Point

“Push, Mardu,” Rask commanded. 

“I’ve done this before,” Mardu growled under her breath. 

She crouched on the furs, while Vok braced her shoulders and Rask knelt at her side, ready to aid when the baby came. Teir continued to play a light tune on his wind-whistle. His fingers were not as skillful as Vok’s and he missed several notes. 

“Nnnh... give me a moment...” she moaned. “Ahh...” 

One last contraction, and the baby slipped into Rask’s waiting hands. Mardu leaned back against Vok’s chest, laughing softly. In her centuries of childbearing she had come to know the signs of a fawn who would not survive, and the fawn who would. The little boy lying on the fur, squalling and kicking his fat feet in the air, had all the signs of a survivor. 

“We did it,” she breathed. Vok wound his arms about her shoulders, holding her tight. 

“We did it, K’Chaiya,” he whispered. “Who says the young come through us but don’t belong to us? This one’s does. This little buck’s ours, and we’re not letting him go.” He stared down at the newborn in wonder, as if the child was his firstborn. 

* * * 

Kahvi crept into the hut of driftwood and rocks. Mardu was sitting up, nursing the newborn. “Chieftess, come see your newest tribemate,” Mardu invited cheerfully. 

Kahvi looked down at the head dusted with brown-black hair. “He looks strong. His name?” 

“Manx,” Vok said. 

“Manx,” Kahvi chuckled. “A new name for a new world, eh?” 

“Kahvi,” Mardu said gently. “A lot has happened the last two years. Can the war not end now?” 

Kahvi sat down next to her old friend. “The war is over. The damage is done.” 

“You’re still our chieftess.” 

Kahvi snorted. “To some. But I see more and more look to you for guidance. Teir turned down the chief’s braids soon enough – I knew he didn’t have the stomach for it. But you... maybe I should try braiding that rat’s nest of yours.” 

Vok possessively fluffed Mardu’s honey-brown hair. Resentment rose in Kahvi’s throat. “I suppose you two are lifemates now,” she growled. 

Mardu and Vok exchanged glances. They said nothing, one way or the other. 

“Kahvi, life is good here,” Mardu said. “Three more fawns should be dropping in the next moon. We’re rebuilding our numbers. Can’t you be happy?” 

“We’ve lost something, Mardu. Call it pride. Call it guts. We’re broken.” 

“Because we were unwilling to fight in your war?” 

“No, it’s more than that. We have no purpose. Ever since we won the Palace...” Kahvi sighed. “All long as the Palace called to us, we had something to fight for, something to reach for. And when we won it we knew we’d have to fight to keep it. That was our new purpose. Now... ol’ blackhair has taken the Palace well beyond the reach of any enemies. And we have a piece of the Palace that we can carry around with us whenever we wander. So what do we have to reach for now?” 

“A better life for our fawns,” Mardu said. “A life without famine, without war. Isn’t that enough?” 

“We’ve lost something,” Kahvi repeated. “We’ve been losing it since the end of the Palace War. And I can’t be happy until I find out how to get it back.” 

* * * 

“She won’t be turned from her sorrow,” Mardu said. She and Teir stood outside their hut, watching Kahvi pace along the gravel beach. It had been a crusting since they had found the great sea – what the Wolfriders called the Vastdeep Water – where the Valley of Ice met the crashing waves. Teir had named their first camp along the seashore the Thunder Cliffs after the great noise the glacier made as it calved great slabs of ice into the water. But Thunder Cliffs was too barren, with insufficient bare land in which to hunt. To the south lay more ice and water. To the north-west, they could just see a great forested mountain beckoning them across a great bay. 

So they had continued north, hugging the coastline. For another month they picked their way across glaciers and great heaps of moraine. They passed into a dark land of endless barren rock. And then they turned south with the coastline to reach the mountain. Here the woods were thinner than those at the old lodge, and the game sparser. But the plains and cliffs at the sea’s edge were full of life, and here the Go-Backs at last found a safe haven. Hemmed in by ice on all sides, they hunted, gathered and fished in a pocket of abundant life. As Mardu was the only Go-Back with clear memories of their days on the seaside, centuries before, she naturally assumed leadership. She directed the children and lifebearers to dig for shellfish in the cold sand and look for spiny creatures in tidal pools. She helped the adventurous build crude rafts and boats to reach the shallow banks where crabs and fish could be trapped. And she suggested ways to hunt the multitude of seabirds that nested in the cliffs. 

Kahvi resented it. She resented her own bewilderment in a strange environment. She resented the peace they had found, a peace that rendered warriors obsolete. 

“The tribe is thriving. Isn’t that enough for her?” 

“She is battling her own frail memories, Teir,” Mardu said. “She remembers we once lived like this – without war, without a need to ‘go-back’ – but she can’t remember how she found joy in it. She says we’ve lost something. But I think she’s lost something... and she doesn’t know how to find it.” 

“She almost froze when she took that tumble in the water. And she had no business being up on the nesting cliffs without help.” 

“She wants to prove she is still chieftess, Teir. It’s all she’s ever known.” 

“She’s trying to kill herself.” 

“Perhaps.” 

“Someone needs to take that cursed Palacestone away from her. And Chot. He’s nothing but trouble, urging her on.” 

“He’s better than Zey.” 

“She’d do better to take to Krim. She hasn’t the wits of a snowbear, but at least her love is genuine.” 

“Too genuine, perhaps. Kahvi distrusts love she does not feel she’s earned.” 

Manx began to fuss in his little sling, and Mardu unlaced her parka, allowing him to nurse. Teir turned to the south. The point where they camped was bare of ice, but behind them on the western flank of the mountain another great wall of ice crept down onto and over the sea. 

“I wonder...” Teir mused. 

“Mm?” 

“That great ice bridge that covers the water. How far south does it reach? Is it a real bridge... does it connect to more land? The New Land, perhaps?” 

Mardu smiled. “An ice bridge to the New Land. What dreams you have, Teir.” 

* * * 

Kahvi watched her tribe at work. Her tribe – it was hardly hers anymore. Mardu directed the fishing, the gathering, even the hunting of the sea creatures. Kahvi still led hunts into the forests for deer and snowbear, but there was precious little large game. No, it seemed the sea was now their provider. 

Kahvi distrusted change. Everything had worked well when they were warriors fighting for the Palace. Elves died. Elves were born. The call of the Palace urged them on when they were tired, rewarded them for their strength. There was a purpose to life, something greater than the day-to-day struggles. Now it seemed enough to simply survive. 

If the trolls or those ancient things called humans arrived here on the point, would they fight to defend their land? Or would they flee again? Would they become senseless wanderers, without home, without purpose? 

Wanderers. Kahvi shivered. They had called themselves the Wanderers, before the Palace called them to greater things. 

Exiles. 

I want more! Kahvi screamed in her head. 

She stalked back to camp. Along the rocky beach, high above the tide lines, were a dozen huts made of driftwood, rocks and frozen mud. Was this what the Sun Village looked like? Kahvi wondered. The thought chilled her. She had listened with many others to Rayek’s stories about his “dirt-digger” kin and the stagnation in which they lived their lives. 

She threw back the driftwood door to her hut and bent her head to enter. She expected to find the Palacestone sitting in its carved holder next to her littlehearth. But it was gone. So was Chot, whom she had left sleeping in her bed a few hours before. 

“Troll pokin’–” she growled, taking up her spear. 

* * * 

She found Chot in the forest, sitting on a bare patch of frozen earth. Melting time was coming to the mountain and the point, and the snow was slowly receeding to reveal cold ground and the first short-blooming plants. A meltwater spring babbled in the distance. 

“Chot!” Kahvi shouted. 

Chot was bent over the Palacestone, his eyes closed, his face screwed up in an expression of pain. 

“Chot!” Kahvi seized him and yanked him to his feet. The Palacestone rolled down the slight incline to come to rest against a snowy rock. 

“You bear-pokin’ piece of scat! What are you doing with my trophy? That’s mine – no one else touches it!” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Chot whimpered. “I... I only wanted to look.” 

She punched him hard in the mouth and he fell over. Wiping at his bloody lip, he scuttled back on the ground. “I only wanted to look. To find a way to find... whatever you said we lost. I wanted you to be proud of me.” 

“No, you wanted power for yourself, you simpering worm, and don’t try to tell me different. Get your things out of my lodge! Go den with Roff and the others – you’re not fit to share a chief’s furs!” 

“Chieftess, please...” 

“Go!” she barked, swing her spear wide. Chot scrambled to his feet and ran down the hillside. Satisfied that she had put him back in his place, Kahvi retrieved the Palacestone from its resting place. 

She carried it higher up the hillside, higher up into the treeline. She found a shady patch of land that was still covered in snow, and she sat down, cradling the Palacestone in her lap as Chot had. 

“Now you’ll do for me what you wouldn’t for Chot,” she breathed. “You’ll tell me how to find what’s missing.” 

The Palacestone hummed and pulsed with light as always. 

“Answer me!” Kahvi shouted. **Answer me!** she commanded in sending. 

The Palacestone seem to sing in her hands. Its weight shifted, one moment heavy as a rock, the next light as a feather. Colours rippled across the crystal’s surface. 

**Tell me what I’ve lost!** Kahvi’s anguished cry begged. **Tell me how to restore the Go-Backs to what we were! Tell me how to restore myself to the leader’s place! Tell me now!** 

The cry echoed within the crystal facets. **Tell me... what I’ve lost... how to restore myself... tell me!** 

The Palacestone quivered in faint response. A warm light emanated from the crystal spires. Kahvi felt a tide of stinging heat overwhelm her. “Wait... no... I didn’t mean–” she stammered as the force of the psychic response almost knocked her over. 

Her hands were burning. The Palacestone was glowing hot as an ember now. 

She was frozen in place, her head arched back. 

“Help me...” Kahvi begged weakly. 

A hand touched her face, guided her gaze upwards. 

An elf-maiden stood before her, clothed in a gown of pure light. Her hair, as white as freshly fallen snow, crackled and shivered as if in a static storm. Her eyes, a startling shade of ice blue, seemed eeriely familiar, like a long-forgotten dream. 

“Has it been so long, sister?” the maiden whispered. 

Kahvi frowned. She knew that face. 

“S-snow?” 

She nodded. 

“You’re dead. You died when Mardu was just a fawn.” 

“And now I live here,” she indicated the Palacestone. 

“...In my trophy?” 

“The Palace is the Palace,” Snow said. “And we all dwell there eventually.” 

“What do you want, spirit?” Kahvi stammered, her eyes wide with fear. “What do you want of me?” 

“I want to show you what you’ve lost...” Snow touched her forehead. “Look at the Palacestone. Look at the patterns of light... light of all the souls who have come and gone... open your mind to what you were... memories long forgotten...” 

* * * 

The girl-cub Briar looked down sullenly as her father berated her. She had killed a fine ringtail for the tribe, enough to feed three or four elves. But she had used two arrows, while her companion Redbark had killed another with only one. 

“Two arrows to kill this?” her father threw the creature to the ground. “That’s one too many. Do you think the prey will wait to be killed while you nock your arrow again? Three crustings and you’re still not the hunter Redbark is!” 

Briar held back a sharp retort. She could have shouted that the ringtail would have died anyway, second arrow or not. She could have taunted that had she yanked out both arrows he wouldn’t have noticed. She could have called him a dung-eating rockskull who knew nothing about hunting with a bow. But she was paralyzed with fear and humilation. This was not simply her father who attacked her, but her chief as well. Perched on a rock next to his regal wolf, holding his twin weapons high, he was the most terrifying creature she had ever known. 

Two great spears, one tipped with flaked blackstone, the other with a strange silver stone, sharp and hard, that shone in the autumn sunlight... 

Two-Spear left down from the rock and ruffled Redbark’s auburn hair. “Maybe I’ll declare him chief’s-heir. What do you think?” 

Redbark smiled up nervously at his chief, his father too. Briar turned and ran. 

“Briar, wait!” Willowgreen begged. “Your kill is worthy.” 

“Stop protecting the cub, healer!” Two-Spear shot back as Briar raced from camp. His taunting voice followed her. “Soft words won’t teach her what she needs. She knows her worth!” 

“Oh, I know my worth, Father!” she wept as she crouched on the ground and tore up great fistfuls of grass. “It is nothing! The lowest wolf has more favor than me!” 

A sending reached her, brought her up from the ground. 

**Some believe you deserve the greatest favor of all, Briar,** the hidden elf sent. **The favor of pack leader.** 

Briar got to her feet. Her father’s old friend Icetooth stood half-concealed by an oak tree. 

* * * 

When winter came Two-Spear led the Wolfriders south, away from the great plains of the Snow Country. There they came across a great empty cavern. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling of the single cave chamber. Pools of stagnant water seemed to glow in the dim light of their campfires. And in the center of the chamber, a six-tiered step pyramid, six great steps leading up to a crumbling stone throne. 

“The High Ones’ Throne Chamber,” Two-Spear said. “They were here once. And they left their magic everywhere – in the rocks, in the water, in the air itself. I found this cave once... years ago. It’s been three eights of crustings since the tribe split, and three eights of wandering. But at last I’ve found it again. And I’ve brought you all here because this cave holds the answers I have sought all my life.” 

The crumbling stone was no fit throne for a chief, and he ordered a new chair made of wood to sit atop the six-tiered dais. The Wolfriders numbered two eights and seven now, the youngest only five crustings old. And they obligingly set up camp inside the cave, though they distrusted its vastness, its emptiness. Most still remembered the snug root dens and hide tents of the Holt... the Holt they had been cast out from. 

The story Two-Spear told at howls was that his sister and her faction had been weak, too weak to become a part of the world and fight the human threat. “They would have hidden in the trees forever,” he sneered. So he cast them aside. They could die in their trees. His Wolfriders would follow the example of Timmain, first among High Ones, who had taken on wolf form to destroy the humans who threatened them. 

It was a pleasant fiction. But all but little Berry knew better. Even Briar knew the truth after many years spent listening to whispers. For Two-Spear’s “weak” sister Skyfire had challenged him for the chief’s lock, and when Two-Spear had been prepared to kill her as she lay bleeding on the ground, Skyfire’s faction turned against him. No, his departure had not been a merciful retreat, nor a triumphant battle charge. He had been driven out. Driven out by elves with such exotic names as Rellah and Talen, Sapling and Red Deer. 

“Choose now!” he shouted to his followers as he was driven back for a hail of arrows and stones. “Stay here and hide forever, or choose a new path and come with me. Come with me!” his command turned to begging. “Greywolf... Willowgreen... come with me!” 

“Go!” Skyfire cried as she propped herself up on a tribemate’s spear. “Go and die alone in your madness, brother!” 

Nineteen elves chose exile with Two-Spear, twenty if one counted the unborn child in Willowgreen’s belly. 

But her child was born dead – a little girl with a white dusting of hair. 

Willowgreen had dissembled well, but Two-Spear soon suspected the truth. The dead baby was not his, but Greywolf’s. 

Within three years Willowgreen was pregnant again, and five years after the split with Skyfire’s Wolfriders, Briar was born, every inch the daughter of Two-Spear. But he had no love for her. Instead he saved his praise for his son Redbark, sired on a sharp-tongued huntress named Brushflame, during those months after Willowgreen’s stillbirth when Two-Spear denied her his bed. 

Why? Briar brooded. Because Redbark was a son, and all males, no matter how they might protest, wanted sons to one day displace them? Or because he had never forgiven Willowgreen for her failed Recognition to Greywolf? 

The three were close as lifemates, to all outward appearances. But Briar knew better. Two-Spear resented them both with each crusting. He resented Greywolf's clumsy attempts to parent Briar, and Willowgreen's gentle, forgiving voice. He resented everyone, everything... everything save Redbark, Brair corrected. The bootlicking worm, always working to further ingratiate himself and his mother to the chief. 

The winter wore on outside and slowly turned to spring. But the isolation the High Ones’ Throne Chamber was slowly eating at the Wolfriders. 

The cave was evil; they all knew it. The pools gave off vapours that made them dizzy if they lingered near the water’s edge. The rocks seemed to pulse with life. The wolves did not like it, and most slept outside. The Wolfriders began to grow increasingly nervous as it seemed a presence in the rocks was watchingthem. Tempers flared. Bad dreams left them all tired and irritable. But Two-Spear would not be moved by those who urged they return to the woods or the plains of Snow Country. He bullied the naysayers and cuffed those who questioned him. He taunted those who wished for the stars over their heads and ridiculed those who feared the cavern’s magical aura. 

“Don’t you understand?” he snarled one night when tempers once again wore thin. “This place was made by the High Ones! There is magic is here – magic we will fashion into wepaons and destroy the humans once and for all! I saw it this in–” 

“Another one of your dreams, Two-Spear?” Icetooth snapped. “What are they – or this cavern to us?” 

And Briar, her frustration kindled by months of winter denning, her rage fueled by sleepless nights and abusive days, seized his metal spear and threw it square at the chief’s wooden throne. 

“What need have we for a chief who rules by mad dreams?” she challenged. “Arrow and spear, knife, tooth and claw are all a true warrior needs! You dishonour the Wolfriders if you’d have us wield magic!” She hefted his great stone-tipped spear and stood on the base of the dias. “ I say you are no longer fit to rule the Wolfriders! Your wits are cracked! It is time for a new leader! I claim the title of Blood of Four Chiefs, Father, just as Skyfire did! You may have fled from her, but you’ll not run from me. Yield, Father, or die!” 

Two-Spear seized his metal spear and threw himself at her with bloodthirsty abandon. As Briar dodged the blows of his spear, as she sliced out with hers and gashed his ribcage, she realized that he would never yield, that he would not be satisfied until one of them was dead. And he wanted her dead, wanted her blood with a passion that eclipsed her own desire for vengeance. 

“Will you show throat?” he taunted as he cornered her by the edge of the magic pool of water. The smell of the water made Briar swoon. Before she could make a move to defiance or surrender, he lunged at her, intent on murder. She rolled out of the way and swung her spearpoint into his bicep. Still she held back the killing blow. It enraged him. He threw her hard against a rock and snapped her spear in half. Then, even as she lay on the ground, helpless, he raised his spear to kill her. 

Briar swung the broken spear shaft up to block his thrust. She scrambled to her feet, her free hand darting to her dagger. Again she did not kill, but instead dropped to the stone floor and hamstrung his left leg. As he fell, she got to her feet again, holding her dagger high. “Showing your throat at last, old wolf?” she demanded. “Bitter fruit isn’t it? It’s what you’ve fed me for years–” 

He drove his spear up, burying the point in her abdomen. Briar felt the cold metal pierce through her body. 

He twisted it, then yanked it free. An expressive of cruel delight crossed his face before blood loss made him fall. Briar tottered on the edge of the pool, then fell back into the dark waters. 

The tribe froze in horror, save one. Willowgreen broke through the crowd, running towards her the pool. “Briar! Daughter!” she cried. She leapt into the water after her. But the magic of the pool was too powerful, and it overwhelmed her healer’s senses. She hit the water like dead weight, and floated face down. Greywolf rushed to her side and reached down to pull her free. The wolf-blood was strong in him, and the magic aura did not overpower him. The catatonic Willowgreen was laid next to the injured chief. 

Two-Spear tried to pull himself up. “My chief, wait!” Brushflame begged. “Wait until the healer recovers.” 

“I’ll heal like a wolf or not at all,” Two-Spear sneered. “To survive the trials that will come, we must know pain, respect pain, live with pain as wolves do!” He hauled himself up on his one good leg. “We leave this place! We leave the carcass of the loser of this challenge.” 

“My chief, wait until Willowgreen is recovered.” 

“No! No waiting! No talking! We leave now! Carry her if you will, or leave her behind with... the other one.” 

“Let her awaken and howl for–” 

“No! I will hear no howl for her! She has no name! I have never had a daughter! Do you hear me? Never!” He seized Redbark’s shoulder. “From today, this one is Blood of Chiefs! We will leave now, and never return.” 

They left, Icetooth and Greywolf carrying Willowgreen’s body slung on a fur between them. She awoke after a day of travel. When she asked after Briar no one would answer her. 

“We have no daughter!” Two-Spear shouted at her when she pressed him. “We have no child!” He pushed her down onto their sleeping furs roughly. “You’ve given me no fit child!” 

Animals often confused violence and mating, and so did Two-Spear that second night of voluntary exile. And Willowgreen lay unmoving beneath him, silent and yielding. Only after he fell asleep beside her did she reach for her delicate hunting dagger and drive it home into his jugular. 

“I will hear no howl for him!” Willowgreen declared when the Wolfriders were awakened by the sounds of struggle and found her bending over Two-Spear’s body, her hands and face stained with blood, her eyes hollow. 

Two days of bloodshed, the chief’s line shattered, and the meek healer now filled with the fathomless rage of a childless mother. No one challenged her when she took over as pack leader. Only Redbark protested in his whining voice that he ought to be chief. But not even his own mother would support him. 

Redbark and his mother died less than a month later, in what seemed to be a hunting accident. No one questioned Willowgreen. The healer’s cold empty stare was enough to silence any naysayers. 

* * * 

They wandered for many years, searching for a new place to settle. But for Briar’s death, and Two-Spear’s, nothing had changed. 

One day Icetooth fell in a hunt, his skull fractured by a stag’s kick. Willowgreen bent over his body for a long time, trying to mend the damage. It was a hard fight, for Icetooth’s wolf half was ready to die. Only after she had battled with the wolf in him... made it somewhat less, did he recover. His right eye was lost but he would live. 

The Wolfriders toiled hard by day and evening, and when they slept, they slept soundly. And so no one noticed as Willowgreen began secretly visiting the elves as they slept, slowly exerting her healing powers over them all, one by one. 

The changes were hard to see at first. Scents slowly grew fainter. As their old wolves died, they found it harder to bond with new ones. Coordination and stamina began to fail them. Greywolf changed the most, losing his keen hearing and sense of smell. 

Willowgreen assured them all that they were healthy, but the elders did not believe it. 

The morning Icetooth decided he would confront the chief-healer about the strange changes in them, he awoke to find Greywolf and Willowgreen gone. They had taken all their belongings and fled. The Wolfriders searched, but no trace of them could be found. 

And so Icetooth became chief, for he was the eldest of the Wolfriders and the most skilled hunter. 

It was many more years before he realized what Willowgreen had done to them all. Only when the last of the wolves abandoned them, when the Icetooth could no longer scent a herd of stags right in front of him, did it become clear. 

They were Wolfriders no longer. Willowgreen had taken Timmorn’s blood from their veins. 

Exiles from the Holt. Exiles from the High One’s power. And now exiles from their own wolves. 

The years passed, countless years. Snows, famines and conflict with both beasts and humans thinned their numbers. Recognitions were rare, but more and more elves seemed to be breeding without it, and so the dead were replaced. The elders died, one by one, until only Icetooth remained, chief to a pack of elves who had no memories of the Holt, no memories of the wolves. He imagined they thought his tales of the Wolfriders were nothing but the fantasies of an old elf. Even his sweet lifemate Sky looked doubtful. By the time their young daughter Snow was fully grown with her own cubs, the old tales would be lost entirely. 

Even the names were different. Sky. Snow. Cloud. Sharp-Hail. Frost-Rain. Gone were the names that evoked ancient howls and images of sunlit woodlands. Now the names were simple descriptions of the natural world. And as the years passed, the multiple-syllable names began to be shortened more and more in their rough elfin tongue. Soon they would all have one-bite nicknames that would sound like nonsense to any other elf. 

But there were no other elves. 

Sometimes Icetooth wondered if Skyfire still lived, or if her cubs and cub’s cubs were now chiefs. But he never dwelt on it for very long. It didn’t matter now, not to them. They could never go back. 

They were Wanderers. 

Sometimes Icetooth wondered why he didn’t lay down and let the snow take him. But something kept him in his skin. There was work yet to be done. 

Years of endless travel, until one day they returned to the High Ones’ Throne Chamber. 

The strongest storm in memory forced to overwhelm them. But their chief remembered the landmarks, remembered the old stones. 

“Here!” he called. “Shelter and room for a fire.” 

They crowded into the cave, all three-eights-and-two of them. Young Snow was crying, and Sky held her close, rocking her gently. 

“Dung!” Frost-Rain sneered. “It’s nothing but rock –” 

“Hey!” Young Cloud cried. “There’s fresh water back here.” 

“No!” Icetooth cried. “Don’t go to the water–” 

Cloud screamed as he knew she would. Icetooth hiked over to the water, bracing himself for the sight of weathered elf bones. 

He gasped. Briar lay on the bottom of the pool, as whole and beautiful as the day she had died. Her black-brown hair fanned out around her face. Her short tunic bared her abdomen, revealing unblemished skin, without a trace of the deadly wound. Could it be that she was still alive, somehow? 

“Was Two-Spear right about this place?” Icetooth breathed. 

“What?” 

“We’ve got to get her out of there!” he snapped. He reached down and drew her up out of the water. His head spun at the magical aura, but he fought the urge to swoon. “Get a fire going, quickly!” 

Briar’s eyes snapped open as he brushed her hair from her face. Her lips parted and she drew in an explosive breath. 

* * * 

She felt back into a coma as he stripped off her wet garments and bundled her up in a warm fur. For three days she lay motionless. On the fourth she began to toss and turn, mumbling words in her sleep. Strange words, like the elfin tongue, but twisted slightly. Icetooth wondered if they might be words of a lost language, the language of the High Ones. After all, it was High One’s magic that had somehow kept her alive all these years. 

One phrase she kept repeating. “Tche ah... ah-kah-vi... tche... tche ah-kah-vi...” 

He could only guess what it meant, though “ah-kah-vi” sounded not unlike their word for “hatred” and “rage.” 

“Ah-kah-vi... ’kah-vi...” she murmured. 

“Bold, beautiful sleeper,” he whispered. “What’s to be done with you? And how can I tell you what we’ve become?” 

At length she awoke, mumbling more nonsense words. 

“With luck, she won’t recognize me,” he whispered to the others. “And no one’s to tell her who I am. From now on, my name is Sharf.” 

She struggled at first, the young warrior. She babbled in her strange tongue, and fought against the hands that held her. At length they calmed her, and at length her words slowly became more like those the Wanderers spoke. 

“Who are you?” 

“My name is Sharf. Do not worry, you are safe here.” 

“And... and who am I?” 

That held his tongue for a moment. 

“You remember nothing?” 

“No. Nothing. Where is this place? Who are you all? Why am I so cold?” 

“You need worry about nothing, child. We will care for you.” 

“Are you... are you my father? I... I remember calling for my father? Is that you?” 

He hesitated. “Your blood sire died... many years ago. But I have been your father... in all other ways. You have been sick for many days. But you are better now. And I will help you recover.” 

“Father.... Who... who am I?” 

He smiled gently. “You are... Kahvi.” 

* * * 

At nineteen years old, she was an empty waterskin, waiting to be filled. Icetooth kept the truth from her, adapted his old howls to suit the new story he wished Kahvi to learn. She was the daughter of the former chief, named Spear, who had died shortly after her birth. Sharf had raised her himself, raised her with love and care. Her childhood had been unremarkable, until a fever had struck her down for days and stole her memories. 

The tribe went along with the deception, grudgingly at first, then with greater enthusiasm, until finally they began to accept that it had always been so. As hard winters claimed more old ones, the younger elves grew up knowing no better than Kahvi herself. Sharf’s own daughter Snow grew up believing Kahvi to be her elder sister. 

Kahvi grew stronger. Sharf patiently re-taught her uses of the spear and bow. As time wore on she won friends, lovemates, and loyal followers. As the years passed, they left the uncertainty of the Throne Chamber behind and moved across the highlands of Snow Country. One day finally came when Sharf decided he had finished his work. 

He fell while fighting to subdue an eight-pronged stag. Kahvi reached his side just as he died. “Wear your hair in the four braids,” he whispered. “That’s the chief’s mark. No one else... has the head or the guts to lead them... I’ll tell the old wolf myself, Kahvi...” 

She wondered what he meant. 

They howled for Sharf. And they danced. 

Kahvi braided her hair in front of her ears and led the Wanderers on into unknown lands. The human creatures advanced into Snow Country, and they correspondingly moved further north into the highlands. They moved between hunting grounds with the seasons. In time they caught young stags and trained them for riding. They encountered a strange band of green-skinned creatures, neither human nor elf, and freed an old broken elf from their bonds. His name was Ekuar, he told them, and the strange creatures who enslaved him: trolls. 

Ekuar was weak at first, like Kahvi had once been. And his mind was never entirely whole. But he kept up with the others, and in time he became as much a Wanderer as any of them. 

Occasionally a few spoke of returning to the old cave and the magic inside. But Kahvi had learned Sharf’s lessons well. 

“We need no home, no hurst!” Kahvi declared one night as they lit a bonfire on the plains and danced about it. “We need no lodge-roof between our heads and the stars. We need no showy magic, no High Ones’ trophy! We are Wanderers – we move with the herds and we live with the tug and pull of this world. We need nothing but what we can carry on our backs, and the tales we carry in our hearts. We carry our home in our hearts! Wherever we travel, whatever we face, we will carry that truth with us! Dance, warriors! Life gets no sweeter than this! We are Wanderers, and we are free! We are Wanderers, and we are home!” 

Home... 

* * * 

Snow was falling, swirling around her. The Palacestone had become dead weight in her hands. “Why?” she sobbed. “Why did you show me this?” 

You needed to remember. 

“Not that... not – pain... sorrow.” 

Strength forged of sorrow. The strength to lead your tribemates where no others could. 

“Sharf... my father... Two-Spear... my tribe, nothing but outcasts...” 

And we survived to be our father’s revenge, sister. 

“Not your sister...” Kahvi wept, as the mounting gale battered her shoulders, pushing her down into the freshly fallen snow. “Two-Spear... Wolfriders... not... Wolfriders...” 

* * * 

“I can’t find Kahvi anywhere,” Krim said excitedly. Teir stuck his head out the door of the hut. A blizzard had come down the mountain and heavy wet snowflakes were falling from the gray sky. The sun was setting early, as it always did in the melting time, and darkness was beginning to fall. 

“She’s been gone for hours,” Krim added. 

“Kahvi is... Kahvi. I’m sure she can take care of herself.” 

Chot showed up at Krim’s side, clutching his parka about his shoulders. “I saw her when the sun was high.” 

“You did? Where?” 

He flinched under Krim’s hard stare. “Well... I took the Palacestone from her hut... I just wanted to look in it. But she found me and took it back.” 

“The Palacestone?” Teir’s head snapped up. Everyone knew how easily Kahvi fell under the stone’s sway. “Where? Where did you last see her?” 

“Uh... um... up the hillside, over there.” He pointed over his shoulder. 

“Show us!” Teir gathered a spare fur and his spear. He and Krim followed Chot as the jittery Go-Back led them into the treeline and up the gentle hillside. 

They found Kahvi lying in the snow, her arms wrapped about the Palacestone. She was alive, but barely-conscious, moaning softly. Teir gathered her up in his arms and cast the fur over her shoulders. 

“Mother! Kahvi! Wake up!” 

“Snow...” she murmured. 

“Yes, it’s snowing,” he said patiently, as if to a child. 

“Snow... why did you leave... why did you show me?” 

He couldn’t make sense of her ramblings. But she did not fight him as he lifted her up, and he was grateful for it. Carrying her slung in his arms, he staggered down the hillside, back to camp. 

* * * 

“No... how can... no...” Kahvi continued to babble as Teir carried her into her hut. Krim, Chot and Mardu crowed around mother and son anxiously. Suddenly Kahvi sat up, furious. “Out! Out! All of you! Out! Out!” 

They slowly withdrew, but Kahvi’s hand shot out and caught Teir’s wrist. “No, you stay.” 

Teir frowned. Krim scowled. Mardu and Chot were simply glad to escape. 

“What is it?” Teir asked. 

“No...” Kahvi murmured. “Oh... of all those...” she looked up at him, her eyes intense. “What I tell you now can go nowhere else – nowhere! Or I’ll stop chattering about it and finally show you your guts on my spear! Understand?” 

Teir nodded. “Kahvi... what is it?” 

Slowly, Kahvi confessed what she had seen in the Palacestone: Snow’s spirit, the origins of the tribe, and her own Wolfrider blood. 

“By the Great Ice Wall,” Teir breathed. “You really mean it! So... we were once Wolfriders?” 

“Why do you sound so surprised? How else do you think you got that pack of wolves chasing you around?” 

“I... I always thought animals just... liked me. The way they like Father, because of the music he makes.” 

“It’s more than that. Go back far enough,” she laughed at the unintended pun, “and we once rode on wolfback and howled instead of danced.” 

Teir shook his head. “Imagine... Go-Back and Wolfrider fighting together... living together... all those years ago – kin and never knowing it.” 

“And they must never know it!” 

“Why not?” 

“Why not? You fool – shall we boast that we’re nothing but cast-off Wolfriders, leavings of a mad kin-slaughtering chief? That – that creature was my father! And your grandsire! Do you want that blood in your veins? Do you want everyone to know that we are kin to madness? And what do you think the Wolfriders would say if they knew? What would Swift say? Would she be satisfied keeping the two halves apart, or would I have to fight–” 

“Mother! What makes you think the wolf-chief would want–” 

“Oh, we are not good enough for her to take in, is that it? Don’t you think she’d relish the chance to turn the spawn of Two-Spear’s Madness into something a Wolfrider would be proud to keep?” 

“Don’t talk like that. These are your tribemates! You’ve raised them up from the muck where Two-Spear left them! You’ve turned them into warriors worthy of the Palace. Don’t you think the wolf-chief would be proud of you, her distant kin, if she knew just how long you’ve lived, just how much you’ve done for your tribe?” 

“I don’t need her pity. And I don’t need her approval. I was leading my folk across the plains when her grandsire’s grandsire was not yet a glimmer in anyone’s eye!” 

“Then why are you ashamed? Why does the truth frighten you?” 

“To hear my father was a mad raving beast who sought my death? Would that not frighten you?” 

“Well...” Teir averted his eyes. Kahvi thumped his shoulder hard. 

“Hold back your tongue, snake-talker! You know I never–” 

Teir met her hard stare. “I know you wish I’d never been born. You’ve said so enough times.” 

Kahvi looked away. “You need toughening up, boy. You’re too soft. A chief needs to be make of sterner stuff.” 

“When did I ever say I wanted to be chief?” 

“I could die at any moment.” 

“Lately it seems you’ve been eager to die.” 

Kahvi’s head snapped up. “The world isn’t won by soft-hearted warriors. What’s the point of life if you won’t strive for greatness?” 

“And risking your neck to catch seabirds? And trying to spear a seabat from a leaking boat? And wandering off into a blizzard with the Palacestone?” 

“Who are you to question me?” 

“Your son, Mother, as much as you’d like to deny it!” 

Once again a wall of antagonism rose between them. Teir got up to leave. But Kahvi caught his wrist and pulled him back down to the furs. “I’m not through with you!” 

“What?” 

Kahvi heaved a great sigh. “I don’t understand why!” 

“‘Why’ what?” 

“I asked that cursed rock to show me what we’d lost – how to recover our pride, purpose. Why did Snow show me all that – despair, hatred and endless pointless wanderings? What has that got to do with my tribe?” 

“Maybe that is the point.” 

“What is?” 

“You said that when you were Wanderers you needed no Holt, no High One’s magic. No trophy. You carried your home in your heart, and your purpose too. Maybe that’s what the Go-Backs need now – not trophies and magic and one hill that we’ll defend to the death, but that sense of purpose that comes from knowing our own hearts. Maybe that’s what you have to... go back to.” 

Kahvi curled her lip. 

“Two-Spear thought he gave his tribe purpose, but he only gave them mad dreams. Sharf had to fight just to keep his tribe alive. But you lifted them up from something more than outcast Wolfriders. And you can do it again.” 

“Such confidence, from you?” 

Teir smiled tightly. “You just need to remember how to be a chief.” 

“Were I not so cursed tired, I’d box your ears for that.” 

Teir got to his feet. This time Kahvi did not stop him. 

“Think about it,” he said. 

She sighed miserably. “I am lost.” 

“Then find yourself, Mother. And don’t turn your back on those who still stand by you. Who love you.” 

She looked up. Teir had already parted the curtain and stepped out. But Krim hovered nervously in the doorway, peering at her chieftess. 

* * * 

Another year passed at the point. Manx was just beginning to stagger about on the beach, and five more fawns had been born. The beach of small huts was gone – now a lodge of driftwood, mammoth bones and stone stood in the center of the beach, flanked by two smaller lodges. Cheider had become intrigued with the idea of paddling across the water to reach the deeper shoals of fish, and he and his friends were constantly experimenting with canoes of various shapes. 

Kahvi had reclaimed her place as respected leader. Of her vision-quest she told the tribe little, simply that she had relived the birth of the Go-Backs, and that long ago, the Go-Backs had been close kin to the Wolfriders. As a trophy, she offered the conquest of this strange world of water and ice. “What need have we for High Ones’ magic? We have a new land to make ours! Let the trolls have the barren hills of the Frozen Mountains. We will go back to our roots, to the days when we could make a life anywhere the winds took us. And I say we will make our life here!” 

It was a good dream, and many embraced it. But for some, the great Ice Bridge beckoned them south. “We could cross over into the New Land,” Teir mused. “Who knows... maybe the Wolfriders are only a moon’s journey beyond it?” 

“Wouldn’t that be a cause for boasting!” Kirjan laughed. “The Go-Backs find a passage across the Vastdeep itself!” 

It was not long before idle wondering turned into something more. And Kahvi was not surprised when Mardu asked permission to take an expedition over the Ice Bridge. 

“I’d ask you why you are here instead of my son, but I know better,” she chuckled. “He’s the force behind this – don’t deny it, Mardu. But...” Kahvi smiled then, “he knows as well as I that you are the only one the tribe would trust to lead them into the unknown.” 

The explorers planned to leave in the late winter, when the ice would be thickest. Kahvi lingered on the sidelines and watched as Teir and Mardu slowly assembled a tribe. In the end, a full fourteen elves would be travelling south across the ice bridge – fifteen including little Manx. 

“You’re a fool to take that fawn on the ice,” Kahvi said. “And in long-dark, no less.” 

“We’re safer while the ice is rock hard,” Mardu countered gently. 

Soon they were ready to leave by the long night of winter. The bay was frozen over. The doors to the three lodges were hidden under the snow, and the elves crawled in and out through the smoke-hole in the roofs. The northern lights lit the way across the great Ice Bridge. 

Mardu and Kahvi clasped hands in farewell. Manx was strapped to his mother’s back, softly bundled in warm rabbit-skins. Behind Mardu her new tribemates waited anxiously. They took no stags with them, only a single dugout canoe Kiv and Cheider had made by burning and hacking their way through a massive pine tree. Two sled-runners were set under the canoe to help it glide across the ice. 

“No stags, no lodge,” Kahvi complained. “You’ll all fall through a crack in the ice.” 

“We’ll do all right,” Mardu said. “But thank you, for your concern, chieftess.” 

“Clear trails!” the Go-Backs called. 

“We’ll be back,” Mardu said. “You’ll be singing our quest to your children’s children.” 

“Go, if you’re going,” Kahvi said at length. “You’re losing time.” 

Mardu turned to Vok, Teir and Kirjan. “Well, let’s be off.” 

“Good hunting!” the Go-Backs called as the fifteen elves slowly turned and set off down the frozen beach. 

“Open skies!” “Safe journey.” 

“Kahvi wouldn’t even wish us well,” Teir murmured as they hiked away from the camp. 

“Kahvi hates farewells,” Mardu whispered back. 

The shifting blues and violets of the aurorae lit the path leading up the slope of the great glacier. Six Go-Backs hauled the great sled-canoe up the gentlest grade while Mardu and Teir led the explorers onto the flat gravel-laden plateau of the glacier. 

“They’re never coming back,” Kiv growled as Kahvi’s Go-Backs watched the last elf disappear into the night. 

“Hey!” Cheider snapped. “You don’t think Mardu–” 

“Oh, they’ll make it,” Kiv said. “They’ll find some nice hunting grounds and set up camp. But they’re never coming back here. One tribe became two tonight, and that’s snow’s truth!” 

“Kahvi?” Krim looked to the chieftess. 

Kahvi turned back to the lodge. “What’s done is done. Let’s go. We have meat to butcher and snow to clear come the next fire.” 

* * * 

The northern lights shimmered and looped in great blue arcs overhead. Under the faint light, the glacier was a glittering bridge of silver and black stretching out over the sea. “A good omen,” Vok said, as he double-laced the straps on Manx’s little carrier. He pinched the toddler’s cheek and Manx giggled. 

“Baba!” he cooed, trying to squirm free. But his arms and legs were securely wrapped at his sides in ravvit-skins. 

“Shh, you be good, little egg,” Vok tapped his nose. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we rest.” 

“Let’s go,” Mardu hefted her spear. “With luck we’ll reach land in a few days.” 

* * * 

Kahvi’s Go-Backs burrowed under their sleeping furs while the time-keeper sat at the hearth-fire, watching the flames slowly die. When the embers needed turning and more kindling, the warriors would rise and return to work. It was only way they could measure days in the long-dark of winter. 

Krim dozed under the furs, her blond hair just peeking out above the bearskin. But Kahvi sat up on her bed, her eyes on the Palacestone sitting in its holder just inside the curtain partition that marked Kahvi’s private bed. 

She stared into the glowing colours, hoping to make out a pattern. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she lifted the Palacestone from its holder. 

It was heavy, as it always was when she was sad. 

“Snow? Sharf – Father? Are you in there?” she whispered. 

The stone did not answer. 

“Please... take care of them,” she whispered. “Wherever they go... watch over them.”


	3. New Land

“Teir? Teir! I need some help here!” Kirjan shouted. The huge ground sloth reared up on its hind legs, swatting its long talons at the panicking wolves and the lone elf who tried desperately to ward the wolves away. 

Teir came racing in astride his largest wolf. He leapt off the wolf’s back and took up a position in front of Kirjan. He motioned Kirjan to withdraw as the ground sloth roared and bleated in rage. 

“Back up, back up...” 

“It’s got Snowruff pinned!” Kirjan motioned wildly towards the white-maned wolf who cowered in the long grass with her pups. 

“Stay back!” Teir ordered Kirjan and the other wolves. “Back away, now!” 

The wolves heeded their chief, slinking back in the grass. Still the sloth continued to posture aggressively. It looked over its shoulder at the she-wolf and her cubs and made a feint towards them. 

“Stop!” Teir barked. The sloth turned its wrath back on the elf. 

Teir studied the sloth in the few moments before the imminent attack. His eyes took in the sloth’s ponderous movements, the way the muscles in its shoulders tensed and rolled. He observed the wildness in the the sloth’s eyes, sensed the panic and rage that exuded from the beast. Teir reached into himself, drawing up his magic, envisioning himself as a raging ground sloth. He took a step towards the sloth, hunching his back and rolling his arms in the angry, dull motions. He felt his magic rise higher, become a cloak around him, as large and menacing as the largest ground sloth. 

“Back away,” Teir commanded. “Back away... leave the wolf. It’s not worth it. Back away...” 

The sloth growled and snuffled. 

“The wolf won’t take the kill. That’s your kill now. Go. Back away. Let the wolf back away.” 

The sloth sank back on its curved claws and lumbered away, snuffling. Teir immediately dropped his sloth-cloak and whistled for Snowruff. Her tail between her legs, her ears flattened back, she slung to her chief’s side, her four pups in tow. 

The sloth ignored the wolves, resuming its feeding at the carcass. “Come on,” Teir whispered. “Let’s give it some space.” 

“I... I didn’t know those shambling things ate meat.” 

“When you’re that big, you can scavenge anything you want.” 

“We’d better hunt again. That was a good deer we lost.” Frustration was thick in his voice. 

Teir shrugged. “Our loss is another’s gain. Give and take, Kir. Give and take. Come on, let’s go take up the hunt again. Only this time, we won’t call Snowruff and the pups until we’re sure the kill’s secure.” 

He whistled for the wolves again, and they fell into step alongside him as they hiked away from the treeline, back onto the open plains. 

* * * 

The lush rainforest was thinning, and the long grasses were slowly taking over the land. Yun frowned as she looked around to get her bearings. They had been hiking for the better part of a month. The familiar forests of the Great Holt had long since disappeared. The few humans they encountered were very different from the fishermen of the coast. The days were hotter and drier, and there never seemed to be enough water to quench their thirst. 

“So? Which way?” Pike asked. 

“I don’t know. Give me a few moments.” 

Skot sniffed. “We’ve been chasing our tails forever. Come on, admit it, Yun. You don’t have any idea where we’re going.” 

Yun glared at him. “It’s stronger here. I can feel it. Whatever we’re looking for is here... I just don’t know... where exactly.” 

Skot sank down into the grass, grumbling. Vaya followed suit. Ember and Coppersky scanned the landscape dubiously. The transplants from Sorrow’s End were used to the heat and the bright sun, but they were no happier to be lost in it. 

Yun had taken her group of five companions from the Great Holt on little more than a whim; a sense of some foreign presence calling her. She had no real magic, and her mother’s Go-Back blood clouded any insights her father’s “starsong” might have passed to her. She was hardly the elf to be chasing ghosts through the wilds of the New Land. But peace at the Great Holt bred boredom at times, and any chance for a new adventure was always seized upon. So with only the stars to guide her, and her motley assortment of hunters and naysayers in tow, Yun travelled north in search of the psychic call. 

“We should have brought Savin with us,” Skot announced. “She knows this land better than any of us.” 

“She travelled the coast,” Yun shot back. “She was never this far inland.” 

“Why don’t you send for the Palace or something?” Skot asked wearily. “I bet the Scroll can find whatever this thing is in no time.” 

Yun didn’t bother to tell him that she hadn’t the power to reach Suntop in the Palace. She had no doubt that if she sent hard enough, her sister’s mate would eventually hear her plaintive calls. But then he would be coming to her aid, rather than simply answering a sending. And Yun was determined not to be in Suntop’s debt. 

“No Palace. No Scroll. No magic. Come on, Skot. Don’t tell you’re bored already. Where’s that Go-Back hunger for adventure in you?” 

“Right now I’ve only got a hunger for feasting and joining, and then a good long sleep back in my tree.” 

“Go-Backs living in trees,” Vaya sniffed at the notion. “We have let the forest change us, haven’t we?” 

Coppersky stretched out in the grass. “Never catch me up a tree,” he said. “Give me a good rock ceiling over my head and solid ground under my feet.” 

“Let’s camp here tonight,” Yun decided. “We’re all tired and snapping at each other. Tomorrow I’ll have found my bearings.” 

“Whatever you say, chief,” Skot yawned. 

They had no faith in her. Not even little Ember, barely two eights old, her wild red hair adorned with the feathers of rainforest birds. Oh, Ember had faith when Yun was on the run, when they could race through the forest with no second thoughts, no thoughts at all but how good the wind felt in their hair. But Ember was like a busy little hummingbird, and she could not abide any pause, any hesitation. If Yun let her off the leash, she would run wild over the grasslands until someone caught her and sat on her. 

But now even Ember lay down in the soft grass and let her head rest against her huge jackwolf Choplicker. She was tired at last. Yun was glad for it. She was becoming annoyed with Ember’s endless chattering and wanderings. 

Yun’s stomach hurt. She had had little appetite of late. Something was driving her forward. She felt bugs crawling under her skin. She had to slow down, had to think. 

She growled under her breath, the wolf in her protesting. It could scent the prey on the wind... the wind that kept shifting, blurring all smells together. 

“Come on, sit down and have something to eat,” Pike said. “You’re running yourself sick. Here, have some dreamberries.” 

“I’ve had too many dreamberries,” Yun grumbled. 

* * * 

It was late afternoon when Yun finally stretched out in the shelter of a leafy tree’s shadow and let herself fall asleep. It seemed she had barely closed her eyes when she felt someone shaking her shoulder roughly. 

“Mmmuhn,” she groaned. 

**Shh,** Coppersky’s sending roused her. **Something’s coming. Intruders. Wolves... and elves.** 

Yun was awake in an instant, and Coppersky hustled her to her feet. Ember, Vaya, Pike and Skot had already taken to the higher branches and a safer vantagepoint. 

Yun followed Coppersky into the trees. For a Sun Villager who disdained the ways of his forest kin, he was amazingly adept in the branches. But then she imagined Coppersky was amazingly adept at anything he set his hand to. He was one of those insufferably arrogant types who thought they could do anything, and usually could. Yun would not miss him when he returned to Sorrow’s End. He seemed to her the worst combination of Rayek and Windkin’s more unappealing personality traits. Coppersky was adored and pampered in the Sun Village, Yun had learned, and countless maidens still hoped in vain that he might overcome his scorn for all things female. Yun couldn’t imagine why. 

They settled in a fork in the branch and Coppersky directed her gaze over the grassy plain. Sure enough, several dark forms were crossing the field. The elves waited and watched as slowly the shadows resolved themselves into six large wolves - larger than the Wolfriders’ mounts – four yearling pups, and two male elves. They were talking loudly, and their slight accent struck Yun as that of Go-Backs. But she couldn’t be sure. 

“–Should have made camp back at that watering hole,” one said. 

“Quit your whining, Kir. We’ll make camp in these trees here. Will that make you happy?” 

“Light a big fire, will you? I don’t trust the beasts around here.” 

“It’s still daylight!” 

“Well, I want it roaring by the time the sun sets.” 

“Ha. You’re still sore I didn’t let you spear that bobtailed cat.” 

“Halt!” Ember’s voice called from the trees. Yun winced inwardly. What was the girl playing at? 

The two males below immediately hefted their spears, and the wolves accompanying them began to growl. In response the hidden mounts of the Wolfrider party began to growl in, and the two jackwolves set up a whooping warning howl. 

“Who are you?” Ember shouted, trying to make her reed-like voice sound deep and menacing. “Who enters the forest of the Wolfriders?” 

“Oh, shut it, Ember,” Coppersky moaned. 

Yun bounded down from the trees, and the others followed her. Soon they were on the ground, facing down the ten northern wolves and the two male elves. 

One of them looked like a Go-Back, with his strong features, compact musculature and fur-trimmed leathers – though he had slashed the legs and sleeves to give him some respite from the heat. The other was taller, almost too graceful to be a Go-Back, with fair olive skin badly burned in places from the heat, and simple deerskin leathers. His gray eyes seemed somehow familiar, but Yun couldn’t place the memory. Memory for Go-Backs was never very reliable. 

“Are you Wolfriders?” the taller one asked, his voice melodic, his peculiar inflection unsettlingly familiar, but still unidentifiable. 

“We are!” Ember said, stepping forward authoritatively. 

“Speak for yourself, cousin,” Coppersky quipped. 

“Shut it, both of you,” Yun snapped. She walked up to Ember and gave her a brusque shove out of the way. “Aye, we’re Wolfriders, by birth or otherwise. I’m Yun, daughter of Skywise, Master of the Palace. And you’re Go-Backs, by the look of you, yes?” 

But the taller one’s eyes had widened at the mention of her name, and it was clear he hadn’t heard a word after it. “Yun? Mardu’s fawn? By the Great Ice Wall! Yun, it’s me, Teir.” 

“Teir?” Yun frowned, trying to see the boy she had played with as a fawn in the strange face before her. At length she grinned and ran forward to embrace him. “Teir! Look at you! You’ve grown as tall as Kahvi - taller!” 

Skot and Vaya watched the reunion skeptically. Skot became aware of the stare of the other Go-Back, and he met it with a certain hesitation. 

“I know it’s been ages, rock-skull,” the Go-Back taunted. “But don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me completely.” 

“Kir? Kirjan? Ha!” Skot ran to thump his half-brother hard on the back. “You ol’ son of a she-bear!” 

“Better not let Mother hear you call her that.” Kirjan thumped Skot back in greeting. “So this is where you’ve been hiding all these years. How can you stand this heat?” 

Skot gestured to his scanty costume – threadbare leather trousers and nothing else. “You get used to it. It’s the rain I can’t stand.” 

“Rain? What rain? I’d murder someone for some rain.” 

“Oh, give it another month. You’ll be wrinkled and waterlogged once the storms start, I can tell you. Come on over here, Vaya, Pike! Hey, Kirjan, you remember these ol’ fleas, don’t you?” 

But Vaya was looking at Teir, and Teir in turn stepped back from Yun’s embrace to regard his sister. Vaya smiled slightly. “I don’t suppose you remember me. I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.” 

“Mother speaks of you often.” 

Vaya laughed. “Nothing good, I hope.” 

“She misses you.” 

Vaya looked uncomfortable. “Where is she? Is she around here somewhere?” 

“No. She’s still in the Frozen Mountains... not quite where you last left her. It’s a long story.” 

“Well, you’ll have to tell it to us,” Skot said. “Come on, let’s get some wood and get a good bonfire going. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do!” 

* * * 

It did not take long for a haunch of roasted meat to loosen the Go-Backs’ tongues. Soon the Wolfriders and the two Sun Folk learned the truth of the long silence that had shrouded the Frozen Mountains. 

“So we camped at Passage Point for a year,” Kirjan continued while Teir silently scratched the head of one of his wolves. There had been a momentary tension between the two packs of wolves, but a simple command from Teir had been enough to quiet both northern wolves and their southern kin. The soft-spoken son of Kahvi clearly possessed some communion with animals, though the Wolfriders could not quite decide whether it was magic or not. 

Ember leaned forward almost unconsciously, to better study the quiet elf. Teir looked up at her through the stray locks of hair that fell over his forehead, and Ember felt her cheeks flush suddenly. There was such intensity in even the most innocent glance from the Go-Back mystic. 

“And a lot of us loved it by the sea,” Kirjan continued. “But for Teir and me, and for Mardu and Vok and the others... well, that big fat ice bridge over the water kept singing to us. And we wanted to find out what was on the other side. 

“So we parted ways with Kahvi and her troop. And we set out on the ice. It wasn’t easy, even in the winter when the ice was hard as rock. These pits kept opening in the ice. And there was nothing to eat on the ice. But we made it. It was the beginning of the melting season when we struck solid land at Snowmelt. I tell you, I never thought I’d be so happy to see cold gray rock. So we made camp at Snowmelt – we were all skin and bones by then, and we spent the whole high-sun season hunting birds and little rodents to fatten ourselves up again. But the winds were too cold on the coast, and Mardu had her heart set on seeing open plains. So we went south again. 

“We wandered through these mountains... steep, bare sheets of rock – a maze of mountain peaks and glaciers. We found this... this arch–” he tried to conjure an image with his hands, “weathered out of the rock by wind and rain. We called it Mardu’s Arch, and we made our winter camp there. So we spent the crusting there, then headed south again when the snows in the passes eased. And we went towards sun-goes-down until we found the Plainswaste.” Kirjan pulled a face. “Empty, flat wasteland of grasses. No trees anywhere... no mountains, no real snow. But it was just what Mardu wanted. She loves the flat land, that chief of ours. She loves being able to see for days’ travel in all four ways. Well, we didn’t have any stags with us, but we found these new beasts – like stags, but smaller, no antlers, with larger heads and long tails of hair on their necks. Mardu’s little boy Manx called one a ‘po-nee’ and the name stuck. Good meat, and strong legs, and easily trained for riding. And you know... I guess the plains are nice when you get used to them. So we built lodges of reeds and animal bones and set up a nice summer camp. But Teir and I... we wanted to keep going, to see if we could find you lot. So we’ve been travelling since last summer. And now we’ve finally found you. It was Teir’s idea, really. I used to think he was crazy to try to walk over the ice and find our cousins in the New Land.” He gave Teir’s shoulder a playful punch. 

Teir, whose eyes had hardly left Ember during the entire narration, flinched suddenly at the blow. “Hmm? What?” 

Kirjan laughed and thumped Teir again. “Head in the clouds as usual. Hard to believe this is the same elf who challenged Kahvi for her braids and won!” 

“What?” Vaya demanded. “You didn’t tell us that!” 

“W-e-ell,” Kirjan shrugged. “Kahvi didn’t want to leave the mountains without a fight. Teir... well, he convinced her it was best for the tribe.” 

“I gave her her braids back,” Teir said. “I never wanted to be chief.” 

“And now your mother’s chief of our band,” Kirjan told Yun. “They’ll be calling themselves Plainsrunners or Pony-riders or something by the time Teir and I make it back there.” 

“Can we ask you some questions now?” Teir asked. “You say the Great Holt is still a moon’s journey away–” 

“At least,” Ember replied before Yun could. 

“Then, what are you doing up here? Building a new holt?” 

“Naw,” Ember shrugged. “Ask Yun. She’s the one whose got us chasing our tails.” 

Yun grew defensive. “I’m tracking... a presence. Something... in these woods... it’s calling to me.” 

Kirjan looked dubious. Teir nodded seriously. 

“Well, that was it, then,” Ember said cheerfully. “You felt your kin calling you, and you found them.” 

Yun bit her lip. “I... I’m glad to see you again, Teir, and you, Kirjan. But... but you’re not it... you’re not what’s calling me – I’d know if it was you. No... it’s something else... someone else. The feeling... the presence... it’s stronger than ever... but it’s not here.” 

“Are you sure?” Ember asked. “Are you sure it’s not just Teir’s magic –” 

“I know what I sense!” Yun snapped, irritable once more. 

“Oh, buckwads!” Skot dismissed. “We found ourselves a good howl here! Why do you have to keep sniffing around, Yun?” 

Yun raised a hand to her forehead. “It’s still here. Whatever it is...” 

“Whatever it is. Wherever it is. Whenever it will show itself. You can’t sense your nose in front of your face, Yun, and you know it.” 

Yun rose and stalked away from the campsite. Pike punched Skot’s shoulder hard. 

* * * 

Yun ignored the shouts of her tribemates as she stalked deeper into the woods. When a clipped pace frustrated her, she ran faster. She plunged through briars and weeds as she raced far from the meadow and the mocking of her kin. What did Skot know of premonitions? And what did a chit like Ember know of quests? 

She ran on, until she lost her way completely in the groves of trees. She was all alone in the twilight now, standing on the banks of an idle river that had not dried up despite the heat. She stood and waited for her pulse to slow, and slowly she became aware of the stunning beauty all around her. Fireflies danced over the water, and it almost seemed as if the water itself was aglow with an inner light. Soft mosses dripped from the trees, and the song of nocturnal birds and crickets filled the air. Under the shade of the thick canopy, the air was cool and moist. 

Yun paced along the banks of the river, until she came to a deep pool overshadowed by some exotic kin of willow trees. She sat down on the grassy bank of the pool and gazed into her reflection. She smiled sadly at the dark circles that were growing under her eyes. She had been acting like a whitestripe with foaming sickness lately. And now that she was alone in the quiet of the forest, she couldn’t imagine why. 

She picked up a little twig and stirred at the water idly, watching her reflection distort and then reform. She let the twig sink to the bottom of the pool and continued to stare at herself mirrored on the pool’s surface. Perhaps if she stared long enough, she would see what it was inside herself that was troubling her. 

The water seemed to shiver slightly, as if a wind were drifting over the surface. Yun blinked at her reflection, and it blinked back. Strange, it seemed... different, somehow. Her eyes were a richer colour, a stormy blue-gray instead of shiny silver... the planes of her face seemed leaner, stronger... her white-blond hair seemed darker, longer as it swirled about her face. The rippling of the pool’s surface was playing tricks on her. 

She looked again at the features slowly gathering definition in her reflection, and belatedly realized her face had changed into that of a young male elf. 

The face broken the surface of the water, shattering Yun’s reflection. Yun caught her breath as she locked eyes with the beautiful elf. She heard a splash nearby and she gasped again, for when she looked up she saw a large silvery-blue tail idly beating just under the surface of the pool. 

Yun tensed, ready to bolt. But she couldn’t move. 

**Yun,** the water-elf sent. 

How could her plain, ordinary name suddenly have such resonance? 

“Sharn...” she whispered the name that had appeared on her tongue. 

She was sinking – the grassy bank was giving way. Yun leaned forward and held out her hands helplessly, and the elf caught her up as she tumbled into the water. Her arms locked about his shoulders and she wrapped her long legs about his hips. At first she felt the slick scales of a fish against her skin, but then she felt a sudden burst of heat, and the scales became warm elfin flesh. 

“So... it was you I was looking for...” Yun murmured as she pressed her forehead to his. She raised her hand to brush a lock of wet hair back from his eyes, and her fingers traced the planes of his face, features so much like hers. 

“Oh, I’ve waited so long... for anyone... and now I find you...” he whispered, and kissed her fiercely. 

Yun laughed against his mouth in gratitude as she clung to him more tightly. 

* * * 

“Should we send someone looking for Yun?” Kirjan asked as the last light faded from the evening sky and still the huntress did not return. 

“Naw, she’ll be all right,” Skot dismissed. “She knows how to take care of herself.” 

A distance away from the others, Teir and Ember sat together to watch the moons rise. 

“I thought Sun Folk never left their village,” Teir said. 

“Oh, I’m a Wolfrider too,” Ember said a little too quickly. “Half Wolfrider. My father is Wing... grandson of Rain the Healer – you might have heard of him–” 

“The healer of the Palace War?” Teir smiled. “He saved so many Go-Backs, Kahvi still complains about him.” At Ember’s quizzical glance, his smile grew shyly. “A magic-user is doing his duty well when Kahvi complains.” 

“Surely she doesn’t complain about your animal-magic.” 

“Oh, she does. She’s happiest when she’s finding fault with something. Besides... it’s not really magic. Animals just… like me. They always have. I... I can think like them. Act like them. Until they accept me as one of them. For me... they are no different from any other tribe. They don’t like strangers. But if you learn their ways... respect their customs – they will welcome you.” 

“It must make hunting easy.” 

“No!” he grew stern. “Never kill the trusting ones. Would you kill a wolf who shared your fire if you needed a warm coat? Never the trusting ones.” He bowed his head. “Kahvi... never understood that. Thought I was... selfish, never sharing my powers with others. I told her – I’d hunt alongside my wolves. But I’d never trick an animal into laying its life down for me.” 

“Where did you learn to do that?” 

“Nowhere, really. My father taught me how to play the woodwhistle... how to walk quietly through the woods without leaving prints in the snow... how to... think softly, so that the animals don’t flee when you pass by. And somehow... I took it one step further. My wolves... they came down from the hills one day to see me. I guess I called them. I’m not sure some days. But they’re my friends, and they and their children have been with me... more than half my life. They’ve followed my from the Frozen Mountains here to the southern plains. But we were talking about you, firehair. Your parents.” 

Ember flushed at the nickname. “My parents... my father is the second chief of the Jackwolf Riders in Sorrow’s End – he rides with Chief Swift’s brother Grayling. And he Recognized my mother Behtia. She’s... a miller – she mills grain,” she added at Teir’s confused expression. Still he didn’t understand, and Ember reached for a piece of long grass that was going to seed. 

“Uh... you grow plants like these... and you collect the seeds and grind them on a flat rock until you get a powder.” 

“And what do you do with it?” 

“Eat it.” 

“The powder?” 

“Oh, you mix it with water and you can eat it just like that, like a stew without meat. Or you shape the mixture into loaves and bake it as bread, or spread it out flat into a sheet you wrap around meat or greens. But it takes a long time to mill the grain down. We used to just do it with two stones. But Mother is building this mill – it’s really just two stones too, but it has wooden supports, and a little crank you can turn,” Ember mimed the action. “It’s supposed to grind the rocks together when you turn the crank. I don’t know if it’ll work. I... I never really pay attention to things like that. I know Mother’s really proud of it. But... but I like the open air. I like riding. I’m one of the hunters in the Jackwolf Riders,” she said proudly. “Choplicker and I have taken down a young zwoot all by ourselves, you know.” 

Teir became aware of eyes on him, and he glanced over his shoulder. Coppersky was pacing by the campfire, watching Teir and Ember. When he saw he had been found out, he turned and sat himself down next to Kirjan. 

Ember giggled softly. “My protector. He’s my cousin,” she explained. “And my father’s best friend. He was so... uncomfortable, when Father Recognized his aunt Behtia. But he thinks he has to look out for me. That’s why he’s here. He never would have left Sorrow’s End if I hadn’t wanted to see the New Land and my family here. He doesn’t have a drop of Wolfrider in him – but he can still ride better than Scouter,” she laughed softly. “Ah...” she craned her neck to look over the long grass. “He’s looking to Kirjan. Does your friend fancy lads?” 

Teir held back a laugh. “No, no,” he added soberly. “No, he most certainly does not.” 

“Coppersky will be disappointed.” Ember stretched back out on the grass. “He’s getting bored with the boys in Sorrow’s End.” 

Teir hesitated a moment, then lay down in the grass next to Ember. 

“The stars are so different here,” Teir said. 

“I know. The patterns are all different from the one’s in Sorrow’s End. I used to be able to track anything, anywhere, at night, just by looking at the stars. Now... I feel like a little cub, having to tag along after Yun and Skot just so I know where to put my two feet. What was it like for you and Kirjan... crossing this land all by yourselves? It must have been... so lonely.” 

Teir shrugged. “I don’t mind being by myself. And Kirjan’s good company. Between him and the wolves... we kept ourselves safe. But it was hard sometimes. The Plainswaste is so... empty. Kirjan never liked it when we ran into animals – the animals are so strange to us. But for me... when it was just us... and the grass, and not a living thing bigger than a mouse. I think... if I didn’t have Kirjan to keep me company... but that doesn’t matter. We’re here now. And we found the Wolfriders.” He smiled fondly. “Though you’re not all what I expected.” 

“I hope that’s a good thing,” Ember asked. 

“A very good thing.” 

They heard a commotion in the distance and they sat up from the grass. Yun had re-emerged from the forest. But she was not alone. 

Her companion was tall, not Glider height by any means, but taller than any of the Wolfriders assembled. His only clothing was a leather loincloth that bared his long torso and longer legs. Silver-blue fins on his wrists and ankles seemed like jewellry from a distance, but as they rejoined the others, the elves saw they were in fact shape-changed membranes drawn from his own flesh. But his face was what caught their attention. His complexion, his cheekbones, the way his blond hair parted on his forehead – side by side with Yun he could almost have been her twin. 

They were both drenched to the skin, and Yun’s sopping wet leathers seemed to hang poorly on her frame, as though they had been hastily refastened. 

“Hah!” Yun shouted at Skot’s bewildered expression. “And you said I was chasing my tail! And you said I wouldn’t find anything! Well, I found him, rockskull! By the Ice Wall, I found him!” She looped her arm through the stranger’s possessively. “This is–” and she faltered. 

“Wavecatcher,” he introduced himself. 

“Wavecatcher!” Yun added triumphantly, ignoring the knowing smiles that were spreading over the faces of his tribemates. 

Skot laughed. “Tumble an elf without knowing his name first – there’s a first even for you, Yun!” 

“I knew his name!” Yun shot back. “Just...” her gaze drifted back to Wavecatcher lovingly, “not the name he uses with everyone else.” 

It took Skot a moment to decipher her cryptic speech. Not so Pike. 

“You Recognized? Hah! So that was the burr in your boot!” 

At Yun’s urging, Wavecatcher sat down at the campfire and warmed his hands over the flames. “Oh, that feels nice. I’m always so cold when I’m out of the water at night.” 

“Hey, throw me a fur, will you? I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes!” Yun called to Ember. 

“What did you do, fall into his river or something?” Coppersky asked. 

“Something like that.” Yun wrapped the fur about her body and began to remove her clothing under it. 

Teir and Kirjan could only stare agape at his fins. Even Ember and Coppersky were a little unnerved. But Pike, Skot and Vaya remained nonplussed. 

“So, you must be an Islander, huh?” Pike asked. “One of the Cove Folk?” 

“I always wondered why they called your lot ‘fin-wrists,’” Skot remarked. 

Wavecatcher grew icy at the phrase. “Ah. You’ve been to Green Moon Bay, have you?” 

“So what are you doing up here if you’re from the Islands?” Pike jumped back in. 

Wavecatcher shrugged. “I wanted to explore. See what was hiding up the jungle rivers. It... well, it didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped.” 

At their urging, Wavecatcher explained in as few words as possible. His tale of exploring closely paralleled Teir and Kirjan’s. Yet unlike them, he had been completely alone for over a hundred years. 

Wavecatcher took to twining a strand of Yun’s still-wet hair about his finger. “I suppose I could have gone back. I had plenty of time, no matter how many times I got lost. But... well, it’s easier said than done. Finally... it seemed better to stay put. After awhile... I didn’t mind being alone. Then... I don’t know... maybe some moons ago... maybe as far as a year back... I started to have this... this hunch that I would come across some other elves if I was just patient enough.” He hugged Yun’s fur-swaddled form. “Thought I’d find other Islanders... boat-folk or selfshapers who came up the rivers in search of adventure. Didn’t think I’d find this pretty lander, though.” 

“You must have struck out for the north long before the Palace arrived in the New Land,” Pike said. “Otherwise you would have heard of us. Didn’t you hear the Cry from Beyond? I thought everyone in the New Land heard it.” 

“Cry? No. I didn’t hear anything. Maybe I had water in my ears. It’s always harder to hear sendings under the water. Slows everything down. So who are you that I would have heard of you? Are you all Go-Backs like Yun?” 

Ember chuckled softly. Coppersky snorted under his breath. “Maybe we’d better start up a new howl,” Pike said. “It’ll take a while to explain this all.” 

* * * 

Over the next eight-of-days, the makeshift tribe hunted and built a small camp. Wavecatcher did not join in any strenuous activity, preferring to keep to the shade as he practiced walking in elf form. “The longer you stay in one form, the more painful to go back to the other,” he explained. “I haven’t walked in... ages, it seems.” 

Yun was all smiles for the first few days, looking forward to the child that always accompanied Recognition. As five days passed, however, she was beginning to grow worried. 

“Why can’t I sense the fawn? Aren’t you supposed to be able to feel the baby inside you?” 

“My mother never could,” Vaya said. “Don’t worry about it, Yun.” 

“I don’t know... I don’t like it.” 

Teir and Kirjan joined the Wolfrider hunters, and Teir impressed his distant kin with his skill at marshalling his wolves. Together he, Ember, Coppersky and Kirjan took down six cuphorns. But Ember was not satisfied with such an easy kill. 

“I want the big one!” she insisted, turning Choplicker towards a huge male with broad antlers and a thick dewlap under his chin. Before Coppersky or Teir could stop her, she vaulted from the back of her jackwolf and tried to land on the cuphorn’s back. But her jump was off, and her dagger only grazed the beast’s shoulder before she collapsed to the ground. 

“By the Great Ice Wall!” Teir exclaimed as he and his wolves reached her. He swept her up into his arms and the wolves drove the enraged cuphorn off before it could charge her. Ember was bruised and bleeding from a small cut to her forehead. 

“What were you thinking?” he demanded harshly. 

Ember threw him a careless grin. “Sorry...” 

“Sorry? Ember, you could have killed yourself!” 

“I just wanted the big one...” 

* * * 

“She’s only two eights, you know,” Coppersky told Teir that evening. “So don’t you try taking her anywhere she doesn’t want to go.” 

“I can promise you, I would never–” 

“And don’t you let her kill herself trying to impress you!” 

Teir took Ember out to watch the moons rise after they all ate together around the campfire. “I know you’re a good hunter, Ember. You don’t have to risk your safety to prove it to Kirjan and me.” 

Ember bristled. “Coppersky chewed a strip of you, didn’t he? He’s always hovering around me, like I’m a cub or something.” 

“You are–” 

“Don’t say it! So maybe I’m still a bit of a stripling. So I’m still a little... little. Coppersky’s littler than me and he’s over five times my age! I...” she scowled. “I just wanted to do my part. I wanted to show you... two that I could hunt just as well as you.” 

“Have you considered a spear?” Teir asked. 

“Huh?” 

“A spear. Rather than a dagger when you’re hunting from wolfback. A spear would give you that extra little reach, and you wouldn’t have to come in so close.” 

“Coppersky uses a dagger.” 

“But he throws his. Yours is a close-in stabbing dagger.” 

Ember considered it. “We use these spear-thrower things in Sorrow’s End – atlatls. Chief Grayling uses one, anyway. But I like to get in closer to the prey.” 

“Your jackwolf’s getting old. It’s not very fair to him to be pressing so close. I... I have an extra spear you could practice with.” 

Ember nodded thoughtfully. “Yun uses a spear. I bet I could spar with her a little.” 

“I could teach you a few tricks too, if you like. With a spear,” he added quickly, when he saw Ember’s eyes light up. 

* * * 

“There’s no baby,” Yun sighed miserably. 

“Don’t say that,” Vaya said. “It’s only been a few days...” 

“No. No, I... I can’t explain why I know it. But... I do. I can feel it, as sure as I felt there was something calling me.” She leaned back against Wavecatcher’s chest miserably. “There’s no fawn.” 

Vaya left the two lovers alone in the shade. Wavecatcher rubbed her shoulders tenderly. **It’s all right, Yun. Maybe... Recognition didn’t take the first time. Maybe even with Recognition you don’t... always get it right the first time.** 

**No...** Yun sighed. **I don’t feel the... the need for a child... the emptiness that needs to be filled, the way it’s supposed to be – the way my father’s lifemate said it’s like.** 

**No, neither do I. The... urgency is gone. The intensity’s still here,** he added as he nuzzled her hair fondly. **But... that... madness isn’t there anymore.** 

**So... we were wrong.** 

**Are we still lifemates?** he asked pleadingly. 

“Oh, High Ones!” Yun twisted around in his arms. **Sharn... I can't lose you.** Suddenly Yun’s eyes lit up. “I know what this it!” she exclaimed. “This happened to my father and my Aunt Swift! And to my sister and her lifemate! It’s – it’s–” she grinned at his confused expression. “It’s Recognition but it’s not. You suddenly know each other’s souls, but there’s no cubs. My father and Swift had it happen to them and they became brother and sister, but they never joined – not even once. And my sister and her lifemate – they became lifemates, but they still haven’t had a fawn!” 

“So, we’re still lifemates?” Wavecatcher asked. 

“We’d better be!” she exclaimed, embracing him tightly. 

* * * 

Slowly the band of elves assembled their belongings and turned back for the Great Holt. Coppersky, weary of quests, suggested they just call the Palace. But Teir and Kirjan insisted on walking the last distance to the holt themselves. “We started this quest three turns ago. We’re going to see it through.” 

So they turned south and began to return march along Wavecatcher’s river, one of the many tributaries of the Green River. Ember killed a large rodent and used its soft hide to make moccassins for Wavecatcher. It was hot enough that he had no need for other clothes, but his legs were sore and his feet far too sensitive for walking on anything firmer than wet mud. 

“You’ve got a fawn’s soft little hooves,” Skot teased. 

“Most of the time they make my tail. Except for the occasional catch on a river plant, they don’t get a lot of wear.” 

“Is that where you got this scar?” Yun traced her fingertip over a pale line that crossed the instep of his left foot. 

“We have a saying in the Islands. ‘There’s always a bigger fish.’ Well, I forgot that one day. Won’t ever forget it again after that.” He pulled the moccassins over his foot. “I was just lucky I was wearing my tail then. Fins heal faster than feet.” 

“You’ve got a skill with the needle,” Teir told Ember. 

“Oh, my uncle Ahnshen taught me.” She shrugged. “I was always wearing my shoes out – so he showed me how I could make shoes real quick – he and the other Sun Folk all use cloth, of course. I go through a lot of little desert creatures to keep myself in good shoes.” She shrugged again. “It’s nothing, really.” 

“Yes it is. I doubt there’s a single Go-Back who can stitch leather together so well. I tell you, we could have used your skill more than once on the journey from Passage Point. Poorly tanned and poorly sewn boots crippled more elves than frost’s bite.” 

Ember looked away. “What I want to be is a hunter. The best hunter. I... I want to lead the hunt one day.” 

“Life in your sun village doesn’t suit you?” 

“I know my mother hopes this time I spend in the New Land will cure me of any... quest-hunger. But...” she smiled, “I’m a Wolfrider. So maybe I don’t have much wolf-blood in me. Maybe I don’t have anything beyond a drop or two. But the chief of the Wolfriders doesn’t have any wolf-blood in her either. And maybe I grew up in sand and sun. But... but my blood calls for the forests, and the grassy plains... and... and green-growing places! Coppersky doesn’t understand. I don’t think my parents do either. Father was only a baby when he came to Sorrow’s End. He doesn’t know anything else. But I wanted to. I’m going to be a real huntress one day, Teir. Chief huntress.” 

Teir smiled softly. “I’ve no doubt, firehair. If you can keep from tripping over yourself in the meantime.” 

Ember scowled at him, but it was a playful scowl. “You’re as bad as Coppersky. He calls me a baby zwoot – all legs and knobby knees.” 

“You’re a colt,” Teir amended. He hesitated a moment, then reached out and gently brushed his fingers against her thick puff of red hair. “You’re a little uncertain now. But in time, you’ll outrun half the ponies on the Plainswaste.” 

* * * 

The forest was growing lusher again as they continued south. Still, Yun found a clear break in the canopy every night so she and Wavecatcher could watch the stars come out. 

“My very first memory was stargazing with my father,” Yun explained. “In the Frozen Mountains when I was just a fawn. He’d bundle me up in his best furs and take me to the top of the Palace of the High Ones where we could see the entire mountain range, and the stars overhead...” 

Wavecatcher wound his arms about her shoulders. “When we get back to Crest Point and the sea I’ll have to show you what’s under the water. I’ll teach you how to swim so quietly that the fish will swim right up to you. I’ve missed all the reefs and caves up here in the wilderness. A river can’t compare to a warm cove on a clear day.” 

“Yun and Wavecatcher doesn’t seem too troubled that there’s no cub,” Ember said as she and Teir sat some distance from the rest of camp. 

“They’re both still young,” Teir said. “I suppose they’re just as happy not to have to worry about a cub yet.” 

“Worry? Why would a cub ever be worry?” 

“Maybe not in Sorrow’s End. It’s different with Go-Backs. Many things are. I... I wonder sometimes what sort of a father I would be. My family... my mother... her father... they were not the sort of parents who inspire love and devotion in their offspring.” 

“But.. but lifemating... Recognition... isn’t it all about two elves coming together, so they can raise their cub?” 

“I don’t know much about Recognition. We haven’t had a Recognition in the Go-Backs for... generations on generation. Father says it’s easier when heart meets heart. You can’t choose your parents... or your children. You can’t always choose the manner of your death. But you can always choose to love, or not to love. ‘There’s more love in the world than Recognition,’ he said when he and Mardu decided to become lifemates... right after my little brother was born.” 

“Cubs without Recognition. It seems...” 

“Wrong?” 

“Strange.” 

Teir shrugged. “No stranger than seeing Yun change into another soul in front of my eyes. But I suppose you’re used to seeing those things happen.” 

Ember was silent for a moment. “Teir...” she asked finally. “Do you have a lovemate?” 

He shrugged. “No. Kirjan... keeps most of the maidens to himself.” 

Ember said nothing, and Teir could sense she was hoping he would ask her the same question. But he held his tongue. Coppersky was right: she was too young, and they were two elves on different quests. 

Strange. He had been around his share of maidens, and minded his share of young ones. But no one had ever touched his heart quite like Ember had. 

* * * 

“She’s... different,” he told Kirjan later that night as they bedded down with Teir’s wolves, a wary distance from the others. Old solitary habits were hard to break. 

“She’s... so full of life... energy.” 

“Our maidens aren’t wild enough for you, Wolf-father?” 

**That’s not what I meant. She’s... a dreamer. Maybe not a dreamer like Yun or those Wolfriders we always heard about around the campfire – she doesn’t have her head in the clouds. But... there is this... fire in her – not that kind of fire, Kir, and don’t even start. I mean a hunger for... for discovery. She’s only two eights – at that age weren’t we all too busy looking out for our own skins and trying to trick each other out of the best cut of meat and the best dance? But she... she wants to take on the world. And I doubt she’s going to let anything stop her.** 

“She’s got plenty of the other fire in her, and it’s aimed squarely at you. You know that.” 

**She has her path and I have mine. Soon she’ll be going across the Vastdeep to her Sorrow’s End. And you and I will leave this heat and go back to the plains. It’s better... not to.** 

“Dung to that! Why is joining always so pokin’ serious with you? Can’t you two have a little fun together?” 

**She’s not like a Go-Back maiden, Kirjan. She’s young... full of fantasies. She... she might think there is more to it... than there could ever be. I wouldn’t want to hurt her.** 

“Oh gutchucks! You’re muzzy-headed for her already!” 

**Send, will you? I don’t want the others hearing!** 

**Augh. I hate sending. Look, Teir. If you want her and she wants you, then what’s the problem? And if you both want something more than a quick tumble, then why don’t you sort it out, nice and out in the open the way any sensible elf would? Don’t tell me these brown-skinned maidens can’t do anything without double-talking it to death.** He chuckled in sending. **At least Coppersky has his head on right. Hah! What say we take him back to Passage Point and turn him loose on Kahvi? And she thought she couldn’t stand ol’ Rayek!** 

Teir smiled softly as he stretched out on his fur and looked up at the moonlight shining through the transluscent canopy leaves, bathing the understory in ghostly green light. 

* * * 

“What is that?” Teir scowled at the strange animal bending down to drink from the little pool. It looked almost like a pony, but heavier, with little horns on its head and a white-and-black striped hide over his muscular frame. 

**Stripehide,** Pike explained. 

**That’s a hide, for sure,** Kirjan sent appreciatively. 

**We’ll take it for you,** Ember decided. She sent to Kirjan but she was looking past him at Teir. **You can take the hide back to your kin and show them what strange beasts we have down here.** 

**You don’t have to–** Teir began. 

**The meat’s sweet,** Yun sent. **And it’ll save us having to hunt later.** 

**Let me take it!** Ember insisted. But Yun shook her head. 

**Coppersky, how about you?** 

Ember sulked as Coppersky unsheathed his throwing dagger and slid down the embankment. Wavecatcher, Teir and Kirjan leaned forward to watch with great anticipation. Coppersky slid down to find cover behind a large log, then crept towards the water hole on his hands and knees, the muscles of his shoulderblades and legs flexing much like a predator cat’s. Slowly he stalked towards the stripehide, always mindful of the shifting breeze, acutely aware of his own movements. Ever Ember found herself entranced by her cousin’s progress towards the animal. 

Suddenly Coppersky leapt out from behind his hiding place and rolled over on the ground, landing just in front of the stripehide. The creature whinied in panic and reared up on its hind legs, pawing the air in front of it. Coppersky threw his dagger with deadly precision, and it cut through the stripehide’s throat, piercing its spinal cord at the brain steam. The stripehide seemed to stay suspended on its back legs for a moment, then fell over to the side. Coppersky coolly plucked the knife free, wiped in on the grass, and resheathed it. If he expected praise for his daring hunt, he did not show it. 

Pike bent down and placed his hands over the beast’s wound. 

“Always thanking the kill for its meat,” Vaya sighed, shaking her head. “It can’t hear you, Pike.” 

“Who knows? If a bear eats you, maybe he’ll thank you in his own way.” 

“Or maybe he’ll just retch,” Skot chuckled. Pike wrinkled up his nose, and Skot gave it a playful tweak. “Fawnheart,” he teased fondly, and tapped Pike’s nose with his. 

* * * 

“It’s only another two eights-of-days to the Holt now,” Ember told Teir. The elves had camped by the sluggish-flowing Green River, and Teir and Ember had forded the river at dusk. No one said anything when they disappeared by themselves, as they had taken to doing every night on the return journey. Teir wondered what the others thought, but decided not to contradict what was probably a widely held belief. 

“We’re almost back in the woods for good,” Ember explained to Teir. “The plains turn into little meadows, and then they turn into smaller meadows, and finally the only place where the canopy isn’t everywhere is along the riverbanks... and in the long grass along the coast. But we never go in the long grass unless we’re in a full hunting party. It’s... taller than an elf on another elf’s shoulders. And there are... things in the long grass. Stalking birds. I’ve never seen one yet – not a living one. Yun says that’s a good thing.” She shrugged. “I want to see one. I bet I could take one down.” 

“You want to hunt the whole world down, don’t you?” 

“I want to see the whole world. I want... I want to do everything there is to do.” 

“There’s plenty of time for that.” 

“I don’t want to go back to Sorrow’s End,” she said fiercely. 

“Of course you do. You want to see your parents again.” 

“I... I’m just afraid... afraid if I stay there too long... I might never...” 

“Never leave again?” 

Ember nodded. 

“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” 

“I feel... itchy sometimes. It’s hard to breathe. And I have to get out there and run... run until my heart is ready to burst. Sometimes... back at Sorrow’s End... I’d get out on the gravel flats, and I’d run. Run so hard my shoes would be in tatters and my feet would bleed. But it still wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough.” Ember picked up a twig and snapped it between her fingers. 

“Sometimes... I like to go off by myself...” Teir offered. “Away from Kirjan... or Jirda, or anyone else who’s around. Just... sit with my wolves, and play something on my wind-whistle... and sit back and listen to the world singing back. We all try to find ourselves, Ember. Just... each in different ways.” 

“Have you found yourself?” 

“I’ve found something I can be content with.” 

“Teir...” Ember reached for his hand. 

“Firehair... don’t...” he began, raising his hand to her cheek. 

“When we get back to the Holt, we’ll be going our separate ways...” 

“All the more reason,” he stammered as she pressed closer against him. “Ember... you’re not one for... fleeting things–” 

“Can’t there something... just for us...?” She leaned in and brushed her lips against his. “I... want... I want it to be with you.” 

“Ember...” Teir touched her shoulders, gently at first, but he found his fingers clenching against the soft deerskin of her tunic. She tried to kiss him again, fiercely, but he held her back, burying his face in her hair. “Heart and heart do not have to meet in an instant, Firehair.” 

Gently, they sank back to the ground, the long grass hiding them from view of wolves or Wolfriders. 

* * * 

Teir and Kirjan stayed for a few days in the Great Holt before asking Suntop to take them back to the Plainswaste. The two Go-Backs stepped across the threshold of the Palace with no small amount of trepidation, but Suntop soon assuaged their fears. 

“Just think of your kin in the north. Think of Mardu and your father, Teir. Picture them in your mind, and the Palace will take you there.” 

And sure enough, the Palace trembled slightly underfoot and when the sudden wave of dizziness passed, Suntop told them to go to the door and look outside. 

The Plainswaste spread out to the horizon, long golden grass broken only by hopdigger mounds and boulders left behind by the retreating glaciers. A single solitary tree stood over a mile distant. The closest rock formation, capped by twenty-foot tall boulder, was swarming with elves. Twenty dun-coloured horses with short, bushy manes idled inside a wood-fenced pen. 

Teir and Kirjan bolted out the door to greet their kin, followed closely by Pike, Skot, Vaya, and the huge wolves. Yun and Wavecatcher lingered in the doorway with Ember, Suntop and Quicksilver. Wavecatcher shivered at the cold autumn breeze and fiddled with the collar of his ill-fitting fur coat. His cold-weather outfit had been hastily sewn together from scraps, his coat from one of Tyldak’s old wraps, his trousers hand-me-downs from a slightly-shorter Rayek. Yun buttoned up her coat and stepped out onto the plains, and Wavecatcher hesitated before following her. 

“By the Great Ice Wall,” Mardu breathed as she stepped back from Teir’s embrace to regard the Palace. “I knew you’d do it, Teir. You brought the Palace back to us. Welcome – welcome to our High Camp.” She looked down at the four-year-old hiding behind her leg. “Manx, come here. You remember Teir, don’t you?” 

“Manx,” Teir smiled. He bent down and ruffled Manx’s hair, and the child giggled. “Look how you’ve grown. You’re not a little egg anymore, are you?” 

Mardu looked up, glanced at Teir, then gazed beyond him at the familiar figure making her way up the rocky steps. A look of wonder and amazement crossed her face, then a dazzling grin broke out, even as her eyes welled with tears. 

“Yun!” she ran forward and tackled her daughter. “Yun – Yun! – my little starry-eyes! I knew you’d come home one day. You’ve grown your hair out,” she fingered Yun’s feathery mane. “Ohhh... come here, come here, come meet your little brother. Manx! Manx! This is your big sister Yun the Wolfrider.” 

But Manx was frightened by the noise, and the child drew back, hiding behind Teir now. 

“Oh, he’s going through a time, that one. No matter, he’ll be all smiles around the hearthfire later. Have you grown taller, daughter?” 

Yun smiled and shook her head. “Not for over twelve eights, Mother.” She hugged Mardu. “It’s good to see you again. And I’ve brought someone I want you to meet.” 

Wavecatcher slowly picked his way up the rocks to join them, still clutching the hood of his coat tight about his cheeks. 

“This is my lifemate,” Yun introduced proudly, holding out her hand for Wavecatcher to take. 

* * * 

Ember surveyed the landscape of High Camp. The winds were colder even than the cold winter nights at Sorrow’s End. The landscape seemed as empty as the sand dunes beyond the village. But every now and then she saw signs of a land teeming with life – a bird flushed out of the grass, an abandoned burrow once dug by a fox. 

“Brrr....” Coppersky wrapped his ugly coat about himself tightly. The matted old fur enveloped his lithe frame, and the hood hid all but his eyes. “How long are we going to stand around freezing our ears off in this gale?” 

“I’d hardly call this a gale, Saen.” 

Coppersky bristled at the use of his birthname; Ember only used it when she was annoyed with him. 

“You can go back to the Palace if you like,” she added. “I don’t think a foam-mad bear is likely to carry me off here.” 

Coppersky shoved the hood back, and the wind blew his auburn hair out of its loose tail and about his brown face. Grumbling, Coppersky began the walk back to the warmth of the Palace. 

Three broad-shouldered Go-Back lads intercepted him before he made it over the first ridgeline. 

“Well... so that’s what was hiding under all the old bearskin...” the first one said. 

Coppersky gave them all an icy glare and tried to walk past them. 

“What’s your hurry, little bird?” the second one said, blocking his past. 

“I’m cold, that’s my hurry!” 

“Well... we know the cure for that, don’t we, lads?” the third one clapped a firm hand on Coppersky’s shoulder. His tribesmates nodded, pure carnality in their mutal gaze. 

Coppersky’s head snapped up, intrigued. Slowly he turned his gaze over the threesome skeptically. “What? All three of you?” 

Again the eager nods as the other two pressed closer. 

The faintest smile crossed Coppersky’s lips. He lifted his chin and released his tight grip on his collar, exposing his slender neck. “I might resist,” he remarked off-hand. 

“We might insist,” the one at his shoulder growled back. 

“Well... then I guess I have no choice,” he murmured softly as the threesome closed ranks around him. 

* * * 

Ember sat amid the soft sleepfurs in Teir’s little cave, listening to the early morning wind howling outside the deerhide door. Beyond the caves in the rocks, many of the other Plainsrunners were sleeping inside tents made of scraped hide erected over old mammoth bones. Ember couldn’t imagine how they could sleep through the gale winds, but the few Plainsrunners she had asked only shrugged and told her they got used to the nightly windstorms in autumn. 

The heat of the little burrow was beginning to fade, and the fat-tallow candles were beginning to burn down to nubs. Ember wrapped the end of the fur over her shoulders. 

“I don’t want to go,” she whispered at length. 

Teir slid closer to her. “Firehair... your place... for now, is in Sorrow’s End. Your parents must miss you terribly. It’s the middle of the second harvest season, isn’t it? Your mother must need your help.” 

Ember looked away. “I want to stay here. With you.” 

“I know you do, K’chaiya.” He kissed her forehead. “Right now, you do. But if you stayed now, you’d miss your family... you’d miss your old life.” 

“I won’t grow old in the Sun Village! I won’t!” 

He rubbed her shoulders. “You’re a colt in fear of a pen. But no one will imprison you; you know that.” He gathered her up in his arms and flipped the edge of the fur up over her head like a hood. Ember smiled at his attempts to cheer her, and kissed him quickly on the lips. 

“You could come to Sorrow’s End with me,” she tried. 

“I will... one day. But the tribe needs Kirjan and me right now. The long winter nights are hard up here, and we’re still trying to tame this herd of ponies we’ve caught. In another year... when High Camp is better established. Then the tribe will be able to roam the plains in month-long hunts, and always be able to find safety here in storms and wintertime.” 

Ember nodded. She started to look away, and Teir touched her chin so she would meet his eyes again. 

“It’s best this way, firehair. This way... you’ll have time to find yourself... to slow down and find what you want from your life. And in another year or so... we can go hunting together and share all the tales gathered in our time apart.” 

“You won’t forget me, will you? You won’t ever... think of me and only think of a little cub who can’t bring down a cuphorn by herself?” 

Teir smiled fondly. “No, K’chaiya. That’s one thing I will never do.” 

He kissed her, and Ember wrapped her arms about his shoulders as if she never wanted to let him go. “It’s not morning yet, Teir,” she murmured when they parted. “Can we just... just lie down together and forget that it’s going to come?” 

Teir drew her back down to the furs and they lay in each others’ arms, neither speaking, until the wind finally died outside and the cold autumn sun rose. 

* * * 

The sun was already halfway to its zenith when Coppersky finally came staggering out one of the tents, his hair unbound and blowing wild about his face. 

“You’re a rutting zwoot!” Ember addressed her cousin as he collapsed on the hard ground next to her. “Brainless, heat-crazed pound-anything-in-sight zwoot!” 

“I love this place!” Coppersky exclaimed breathlessly. 

Finally Yun and Mardu emerged from the chief’s cave, and Yun signalled with a nod that it was time to leave. 

“You’ll come back to visit, won’t you?” Mardu asked Yun as they said their farewells in front of the Palace. “And if you’re wrong and it is Recognition and a fawn does come, even a little late, you’ll let us know so I can see my grandchild born, won’t you?” 

Yun nodded. “I will, Mother. And you’ll send to me when you and Vok have another little ankle-biter, won’t you? You have no excuse now.” 

Mardu looked down at the crystal flake in her hand. No bigger than a spearhead, Suntop had chipped it off a wall in the Palace for her. “I’m sorry we didn’t bring any rockshapers with us to shape a nice little trophy for you,” he had said. “But this is small enough to carry with you anywhere you roam, and it’ll make sure that even if I’m a little too lost in other sendings, I’ll always hear the Plainsrunners.” 

“The world is so much smaller now,” Mardu murmured. 

“Still big enough for more than our fair share of adventures,” Yun said. 

A few paces away, Ember and Teir said their own goodbyes. “I’ll come back,” Ember insisted. “I will. Once I settle everything in Sorrow’s End. And you’ll be waiting for me?” 

“Always, firehair. And don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave your home. Take as long as you need. I’ll still be here.” He hesitated a moment, then reached down and lifted one of his two cat’s-claw necklaces from around his neck. Carefully, he slipped it over Ember’s head and settled it against her collarbone. 

Tears were welling in Ember’s eyes, and she rubbed at them helplessly. She looked down at the gift, at a loss for words. At length her eyes lit up, and she reached up to unfasten the little leather ornament in her hair. She placed it Teir’s hand, and carefully closed his fingers over the embroidered leather oval and the two bright feathers plucked from rainforest birds. 

“So you don’t forget me,” she added. 

“I could not forget you even for a moment, firehair.” 

Ember hugged him fiercely, kissed his lips one last time, then turned and jogged towards the Palace door before she could change her mind. 

The Plainsrunners, over twenty now with the new fawns who had joined the ranks, all assembled around the ridges of High Camp to wave farewell to the travellers. Without a sound, with a single blinding flash of light, the Palace was gone. 

“Well, back to work,” Mardu commanded. “Come on, we’ve got caves to clear out before the snows come.” 

“You going to be all right?” Kirjan looped an arm over his friend’s shoulder. 

Teir nodded. 

“You didn’t have to stay here, you know. You could have gone with her.” 

“No. No... she needs a little time to learn more about herself... to be with her parents and her tribe.” Teir looked down at the ornament in his hand. “She needs to know her own heart... before she can offer it to another.” 

Kirjan whistled. “You’re stronger than I would have been, old friend.” 

* * * 

Winter passed at High Camp. The snow covered the lower caves in the rocks, and the cold wind found ways to creep into the second story dens. The deerhide-and-bone lodges had to be fortified with stones and some of their precious store of wood. Vok suggested that come the thaw they dig into the ground and build earth lodges like those at Passage Point. 

The food supply grew short, but as stomachs growled, Mardu refused to sacrifice the animals penned behind the rocky ridge. “No!” she snapped when young Jirda pleaded again. “No. The wild ones that run free – they are meat and hide for us. Not the trusting ones, penned and at our mercy. Not the ones who whinny with joy when they see Vok bringing them their ration of dried grasses. Those will be our mounts, our legs to take us across these plains. And one day soon, those ones will run free until one of us whistles, and then they’ll come running to us as gladly as Teir’s wolves come to him.” 

The wolves were hungry too, but they obeyed Teir’s commands to stay clear of the pen. In time, he was confident that rider on horseback and wolf on four feet could hunt together without incident. 

He tied Ember’s hair ornament to a staff and set it against the corner of his small cave. His wolves kept him company during the long nights. Kirjan preferred to den with the maidens now that they had rejoined their tribe. But Teir could only think of Ember: the warmth of her red-brown skin, the sharp scent of her hair, the bird-like melody of her voice. Every day he fought the impulse to take the Palaceshard from Mardu and summon the Palace for a flight to Sorrow’s End. Every day he reminded himself that it was best this way. He would not let Ember stumble in her path because of a lovemate’s infatuation. If it was true and meant to be, she would return when she was ready. 

Spring came to the Plainswaste and the snow began to melt. Slower to thaw was the hard ground, and work on the winter earth lodge was slow. The hunters picked out the ponies that suited them, and rider and mount slowly began to bond. Several even found names for their ponies, something unheard of in the old days of Go-Backs and great stags. 

The short summer was approaching as the wildflowers began to bloom. Now the plains were teeming with life – with ground sloths and helmeted shagbacks and fleet-footed tusked deer. A huge bonfire was always burning, smoking meat for the stockpile. It was never too early to plan for winter, Mardu said. That was the lesson she had learned from a lasting peace. 

How was Ember faring? Teir wondered. Had she gone back to Sorrow’s End full of confidence at her recent initiation and picked herself a hot-blooded lovemate who suited her restlessness better? 

The mares foaled in the late spring, and Mardu and Vok were helping the new colts to their feet. Teir’s pack had shrunk as two yearlings left to seek their own fate, and another died in the harsh winter. But a a litter of five new pups joined the pack, bringing its numbers back up to twelve. Teir sat whittling himself a new arrow with his hoof-handled dagger as the pups kept nibbling at his leathers and whining for attention and food. 

He felt the arrival of the Palace an instant before the flash lit up the rocks. 

He turned, dropping the arrow, and sheathed his dagger as he raced down to the field where the Palace came to rest. The great open doors came into view, and standing on the threshold was Ember. 

She was changed: the gangly colt had matured into a tall graceful elf. The wild puff of red hair was now a silky mane reaching halfway down her back. But her eyes were the same, as was the smile that alighted on her face when she saw him. She was clad in cold weather leathers better tailored to her figure than the coat she had bundled in the previous autumn. On her shoulder she carried a heavy bedroll and a spear. 

Teir stopped a few paces from her, letting her come to him. Ember hesitated, then strode confidently towards him. 

“I... I claim pack-right in your tribe,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “Where I belong.” 

He struggled to find his voice as well. “And... your tribe? Your family?” 

“They know I’ll be by again one day... with you.” 

He took a tentative step towards her, and then Ember rushed into his arms, laughing. 

**Oh, firehair... I missed you,** he sent, hugging her fiercely. 

* * * 

From the top of the boulder, they could see out over the Plainswaste in all four horizons. “What happened to the tree?” Ember asked. 

“We cut it down for the wood. We probably shouldn’t have.” 

“You need a treeshaper.” 

Teir smiled. “It would help. We have to burn grasses, bone chips and dried pony dung for the fires come winter. The smoke is horrible. But it keeps us warm.” 

“It’s so empty here.” 

“I like it here. It’s... peaceful. The plains have secrets they don’t give up all at once.” 

Ember smiled. “You could run forever here... and never lose sight of the camp.” 

Teir slipped an arm about her waist. “We can run wherever you like, lovemate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the full EQ Alternaverse at http://www.janesenese.com/swiftverse


End file.
